Frank Field: Would it be right to draw from the Secretary of State's speeches over the past few months that while there is much for Labour Members to be proud of, there is still much to do? As a Government, we have seen the creation of an additional 2 million jobs, and we have spent an additional£60 billion on welfare reform, yet the number of working-age claimants during our stewardship has only fallen from 5.6 million to 5.4 million. May I therefore encourage him to continue the debate that he has begun and to make it central to the renewal of this Government?

James Plaskitt: I am happy to tell the hon. Gentleman that it is. If he cares to examine the rules that relate to recovery, he will see that recovery of overpaid benefit is not the top priority in recovery from those who are on any form of benefit. Indeed, housing costs and debtsto fuel payment must be recovered before any overpayment of benefit. A rule that we apply throughout the process of recovering debts to the benefits system is that we shall not do so in a way that inflicts hardship on any of our customers.

Anne McGuire: We will obviously consider the views of the energy agency that my hon. Friend has highlighted, but I should also like to ensure that the House is fully aware that between 1997 and 2005 pensioner income increased by 25 per cent. We spent£2 billion on winter fuel payments in winter 2005-06, which is only part of the agenda to tackle fuel poverty. The Warm Front scheme and similar schemes in the devolved Administrations, to which my hon. Friend alluded, are also part of our campaign to ensure that fuel poverty is eradicated in this country.

Philip Hollobone: How many pensioners are (a) eligible for and (b) claiming means-tested benefits in (i) Great Britain and(ii) Northamptonshire; and if he will make a statement.

James Purnell: The hon. Gentleman will be delighted to know that, last year, the Pension Service visited more than 1 million people, and is calling 5,000 people every week. Take-up has increased from 74 per cent. to 81 per cent. When we came to power, there were3 million pensioners in poverty, but now there are fewer than 1 million. That may not be perfect, but it is very good progress, and it would not have happened under his party, which opposed every one of those measures.

Jim Murphy: Since April this year, call centres have received 22 million calls. All but 0.3 per cent. were answered, and only 0.3 per cent. produced the engaged tone. A National Audit Office report showed that86 per cent. of customers thought their calls had been dealt with in a reasonable time. Of course we can go on finding more ways of improving customer care for benefit recipients and customers, which is why in the last couple of weeks we have announced a freephone number—a single point of contact—for all working-age benefit claimants. I think that that will be welcomed by customers and citizens throughout the country.

Jim Murphy: I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his new position on the Front Bench, and hope that his future questions will be a little better informed. As I said, since April our telephone lines have received22 million calls. Of course, if his constituent is one of those who make up the 0.3 per cent. of customers who have received an engaged tone, that is unacceptable. In the public sector, we want continually to find ways to support customer service and responsiveness in the public services. We can learn from some of the innovations in the private sector. We want continually to find ways to provide a first-class service to our public sector customers, regardless of whether they are benefit recipients, benefit customers or anyone else.

Michael Weir: As agreements will be an important part of the new system, will the Secretary of State at least tell us whether he has had discussions with the Scottish Executive as to how they will work in the Scottish legal system, and in particular whether there will be provisions for implementationof these agreements and for variation on change of circumstance?

Maria Miller: Over£1 million of the money that the CSA has failed to collect is owed not to the Government but directly to thousands of parents, who have suffered extreme financial hardship. As a result of that, will the Secretary of State confirm today that he will continue to pursue those payments, and that he will not at some point in the future decide to write off any of that money?

Alistair Carmichael: Will the Secretary of State bear in mind that a constituent of mine in Shetland calculates that it will take 15 years for the child maintenance arrears for her child to be paid, which means that her child will be27 before all the arrears are paid? Will he ensure that the people who are in that situation will not be the victims of a mass write-off of debt? That is the real concern that she brings to me.

Jim Murphy: There are 1 million more over-50s in work than a decade ago. We have received a number of representations on what more can be done, none of which advocate the abolition of the new deal 50-plus, but perhaps we are about to hear the first.

Anne McGuire: Depending on their personal circumstances, disabled people have access to the full range of social security benefits, including disability living allowance and attendance allowance. In 2005-06, disability living allowance and attendance allowance provided more than £12.5 billion towards the extra disability-related costs of almost4.2 million disabled people.

Anne McGuire: I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting the work of that voluntary organisationin her constituency, which reflects the experience of many people across the country, where voluntary organisations work in partnership with Jobcentre Plus and other agencies to deliver tremendously positive outcomes for disabled people. That is why, in our roll-out to pathways, we see a crucial role for the involvement of the voluntary sector.

Jack Straw: I shall certainly do that, because I want to see as many proposals reaching the statute book as have consensus. Bills should not be delayed or blocked for procedural and non-substantive reasons. I do not know exactly why there is such a disparity; I have certainly been encouraging ministerial colleagues to give a fair wind rather than a difficult wind to proposals for private Members' Bills. I must add that there a number of private Members' Bills that hit the buffers initially, but whose ideas later find their way into substantive Government legislation.

John Reid: This statement provides a factual account of the circumstances surrounding the death of Mr. Litvinenko on 23 November 2006. There is, as the House will know, an ongoing police investigation, and I know that the right hon. Gentleman appreciates that, for obvious reasons, I am limited in what I can say to ensure the integrity of any judicial process. My right hon. Friends the Foreign Secretary and Secretary of State for Health and I have co-ordinated the Government's response on this incident.
	In the late afternoon of Thursday 23 November, the police confirmed with the Health Protection Agency that a significant quantity of the radioactive isotope polonium-210 had been found in Mr. Litvinenko's urine. The material was identified following extensive tests by forensic toxicologists. In response to this finding, the police liaised closely with experts to search for any residual radioactive material at a number of locations in London.
	The police have now confirmed that traces of polonium-210 have been found at certain locations, including the Itsu sushi restaurant at 167 Piccadilly, in some areas of the Millennium hotel, Grosvenor square and at Mr. Litvinenko's home in Muswell Hill, London. Tests are continuing at a number of locations. The police are continuing an extensive examination of CCTV footage to trace possible witnesses, to examine Mr. Litvinenko's movements at relevant times, including when he first became ill and to identify people whom he may have met.
	Following the confirmation of the presence of polonium-210, the Health Protection Agency investigated clinical areas at Barnet hospital and University College hospital. One area in the intensive care unit remains closed at University College hospital. All other areas at these hospitals are functioning as normal on the advice of the Health Protection Agency.
	The Health Protection Agency has requested that anyone who was in the Itsu restaurant, Piccadilly, or who was in the Millennium hotel on 1 November to contact NHS Direct, where further advice is available. In addition, the chief medical officer, ProfessorSir Liam Donaldson, issued advice to GPs and hospitals on the risks and clinical implications of exposure to polonium-210.
	NHS Direct has so far received approximately 500 calls relating to this incident. A small number of people have been invited to take follow-up tests as a precaution. I emphasise that the Health Protection Agency has made clear the very precautionary nature of this invitation.
	The Itsu restaurant remains closed and the Government Decontamination Service is in discussions with the owners about the clean-up process. A bar and various locations at the Millennium hotel are currently closed to the public. Ongoing work is taking place at the hotel and at Mr Litvinenko's residence.
	The coroner will decide whether a post mortem will take place following advice from the Health Protection Agency. Mr Litvinenko's body is currently at a London mortuary.
	The Russian ambassador was called to the Foreign Office on 24 November. He was asked to convey to the Russian authorities our expectation that they should be ready to offer all necessary co-operation to the investigation as it proceeds.

David Davis: I thank the Home Secretary for that statement. I quite appreciate the limitations on what he can say.
	As the Home Secretary has said, the death of Mr. Alexander Litvinenko occurred in suspicious circumstances. I assume that is why Cobra was convened last week or over the weekend. There are grounds to suspect that this was a particularly cruel, protracted and unpleasant assassination, and Mr. Litvinenko, his family and his associates all believe that he was the victim of a Russian secret service assassination attempt. It is far too soon to know the truth of that, but I would not in any event expect the Home Secretary to comment on that. However, what appears to be known, as I think the Home Secretary has confirmed, is that Mr. Litvinenko was poisoned by a dose of polonium-210, a synthetic radioactive isotope. That raises a number of issues about how such material is obtained as it is made by a sophisticated technique normally available only to Governments, about the technical sophistication involved in transporting and delivering the material undetected and, in particular, about the knowledge required to calculate the dose sufficient to kill but low enough to make detection difficult, as it was in this case.
	That, in turn, means that it is incredibly important to resolve the question of whether the Russian state was involved. If it was—given that a British citizen who had been given asylum and was therefore under British Government protection may have been murdered on British soil—that has enormous implications for the relationship between the United Kingdom and Russia and implications, too, for other émigrés in the United Kingdom who are opponents of the Russian Government. If the Russian state was not involved, that raises the almost equally disturbing prospect that such sophisticated capabilities are available to criminals in the United Kingdom and possibly therefore to other groups.
	The House will understand that, for reasons of law, diplomacy and, indeed, other proprieties, there are limits on what the Home Secretary can say. He has already told the House that the Government have sought the co-operation of the Russian Government in pursuing these inquiries. Will he tell us the extent of that? Will that allow state employees with diplomatic immunity to be interviewed? Will it allow access to Russian citizens who may have entered or left the United Kingdom recently? Will it allow the UK police to have the right to interview other Russian citizens such as the associates of Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist who was murdered recently and who appears to have been an associate of Mr. Litvinenko? Have the Russian Government undertaken to co-operate in all such inquiries?
	It has also been widely reported that traces of radioactivity have been found in three or more separate locations around London. I could not quite keep count as the Home Secretary was speaking; it think it is more than three. That is clearly a matter of concern to ordinary members of the public who may have visited one of those locations. Will he confirm what I understood him to be saying—that the three who have so far been kept in because they are showing symptoms are only possible and not likely contaminees? Will he also tell the House what action has been taken to protect the safety of the public further and, in particular, when in this process the Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response at Porton Down was involved?

Mark Pritchard: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Have you received a notificationof a change of name? As you are probably aware, The Scotsman today reported that the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) appears to be knighted in the House, but not knighted outside it. I wondered whether you had been informed of this.

George Osborne: I will make some progress.
	On education spending, let us listen to the Select Committee on Education and Skills:
	"The Government needs to take great care in making claims about the efficiency of increased investment in education...which the evidence cannot be proved to support."
	But, of course, the Chief Secretary put it best when he said bluntly that
	"a lot of money has been spent but very little seems to have been achieved".
	Why is that? It is because the Chancellor broke his promise that not a penny would be spent unless it was accompanied by reform. He gave the spending Departments everything that they asked for, and got nothing in return. The Granita touch has never deserted him.
	Now the Treasury is engaged in another comprehensive spending review. Let us consider some of the things that we think that the Chancellor should review. Let us review the centrepiece of this year's Budget: what he called his pledge to raise future spending on state schools to today's private school levels. Though cheered to the rafters by the lemmings on the Labour Benches,the Education and Skills Committee now says that the Chancellor's Budget promise is "without substance". The Institute for Fiscal Studies calls it "virtually meaningless". Tackling poor education and skills is perhaps the greatest challenge facing our economy, and his policy is called "virtually meaningless". It has gone from being a pledge to an aspiration, from a rabbit out of the hat on Budget day to a rabbit in the headlights of the spending review.

George Osborne: The right hon. Gentleman talks about being patronising!
	Because of the way that they have been designed, the tax credits have undermined incentives to work. That is the finding of last month's devastating joint study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation: their report concludes that the indirect effect of Gordon Brown's policies might be to increase poverty. Such problems arise when one focuses on the symptoms, and not just the root causes: poor education, family breakdown, mental health issues.
	Unlike the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane), other Labour MPs are queuing up to disagree with their Government. The right hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn), who is not present for some reason, says that poverty has become more entrenched. The current Secretary of State for Education and Skills says that
	"it is actually getting harder for people to escape poverty".
	That is right: after a decade of a Labour Government, a member of the Labour Cabinet admits that it is harder for people to escape poverty. What an epitaph to the life's work of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that is—and what an indictment of his approach.
	The last time we met, the Chancellor completely lost his cool in the Chamber and threw some papers at me. They were covered in handwriting and I have them with me. We sent them to a graphologist—to the principal of the London College of Graphology. I must confess that I was a bit of a sceptic about graphology, but I am impressed by the results. The graphologist says that the writer is not shy—I am sure that Members would agree with that—that the writer shows unreliable and poor judgment and was not in control of their emotions at the time of writing, and that there are signs that the writer can be evasive. It looks like the clunking fist is betrayed by his handwriting.
	There is nothing that the Chancellor has been more evasive about than the coup he attempted against the Prime Minister earlier this autumn. Of course, he denies that; he wants us to believe that it was a complete coincidence that the chief assassin—the hon. Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Watson)—just happened to pop round to his house in Fife a couple of days earlier. He told us that all they did was sit down and watch a "Postman Pat" video together; it must have been the episode in which Pat kills the postmaster.  [Interruption.] But the question that the country is asking is not: why is the Chancellor so disloyal to the Prime Minister? It is: why does he think he would be so different from the Prime Minister?  [Interruption.]

George Osborne: The hon. Member for Glasgow, North-West (John Robertson) must be careful: he should not misbehave, as the Economic Secretary is looking for a new constituency.
	Why does the Chancellor think that he would be so different from the current Prime Minister? After all, the Chancellor has been in charge of domestic policy for 10 years. The jobs that are being cut in the NHS are his cuts. The failing secondary schools are his failures.The shambolic tax credit system is his shambles. The pensions destroyed were destroyed by him. He is the clunking fist, and the country has had quite enough of the damage that he has done.

Gordon Brown: Is it not remarkable that in the Queen's Speech debate on the economy, when we are supposed to be reviewing the economy over the past year and discussing its likely performance over the future year, the shadow Chancellor, the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne), cannot begin to acknowledge the one central fact about British economic life: that we have had the longest period of sustained growth in the history of our country? That is something that no other country—not America, not France, not Germany—has had over the past10 years, and it is something that no Conservative Government have ever been able to deliver. It is something that has not happened in the industrial history of our country. The shadow Chancellor would do better to quote to the House what he says to the business community when he speaks to it, which is that the Labour party has
	"become in the public's mind the party of economic competence."
	As this debate is about the economy, the shadow Chancellor should also acknowledge that not only have we had sustained growth in this country, but we have had the lowest level of inflation for 30 years, the lowest interest rates and mortgage rates—

Gordon Brown: This is a very important point, because it is about the future of the Conservative party. Didthe right hon. Gentleman say, in his economic competitiveness group, that he wanted to produce plans for vouchers for public services, which the shadow Chancellor says they will not do? Did the right hon. Gentleman also say that if people wanted to sign up to no-regulation products in the financial services industry, they should be free to do so? The answer is yes. At the same time that Conservative, Liberal, nationalist and Labour Members are complaining about what has happened to Farepak, the right hon. Gentleman would remove the possibility of regulation.

Edward Vaizey: Will the Chancellor give way?

Gordon Brown: I will not give way. We take seriously the security needs of Britain and the issue of how to meet those needs through public expenditure. I can confirm not only that we have doubled the security budget, but that we are considering a single security budget. I can also confirm that we have spent £5 billion on Iraq and Afghanistan. To continue the support of our armed forces, I am making available extra money for operational needs. We are setting aside £24 millionfor the "Better Basra" project, and at least a further £100 million in reconstruction. We will expedite approval of any other desires that the Army has for necessary equipment if a similar operationally urgent need arises. I have said that there should be no hiding place for those who perpetrate terrorism, and there should be no hiding place for those who finance it, either.
	I turn to the challenges of global economic restructuring. The Queen's Speech legislation on further education reform, welfare reform, and statistics, as well as the document that we published today setting out the long-term challenges, are designed to make us better equipped, as a nation, for the challenges ahead. Asia is now producing more than Europe, and China alone produces half our computers, clothes and digital cameras. Even more challenging for the future is the prediction that China and India are likely to be responsible for half of the world's growth in the next 10 years. There has been a 400 per cent. increase in the number of unskilled workers in the industrialised economy. China and India charge wage rates that are only 5 per cent. of those of the United Kingdom, and they are therefore making large numbers of the world's unskilled workers unemployable or redundant. That is a major social, as well as economic, challenge, and that is why we have set up a number of reviews, led by prominent business men and women in this country.
	Our challenge is to out-innovate our competitors, and to consider how to build on our commitment to science. That commitment has led us to double the science budget. The Gowers report will consider how Britain can become the leading intellectual property centre of the world. The Cooksey report will consider how we can bring private and public sectors together, so that we can take the lead in medical technology. In transport, where we are still paying the price for decades of under-investment under the Conservatives, Rod Eddington, former chief executive of British Airways, will advise on future priorities. Kate Barker, a member of the Monetary Policy Committee will produce her report on planning.
	I turn to the skills needs of the economy. Allied to further education— [Interruption.] The Conservatives do not like talking about serious issues, such as the future of jobs and skills in our economy. We have made more progress towards full employment than any Government in recent years.

Gordon Brown: It is interesting that I can give the hon. Gentleman figures for his constituency but he cannot give them to me.
	When the Welfare Reform Bill and the Further Education and Training Bill go through the House of Commons, we shall also be considering the Leitch report on skills. Since 1997, we have trebled apprenticeships; through educational maintenance allowances, we have increased the number of people staying on at school to 300,000; and the national employer training programme is forecast to reach 350,000 employees. In addition, the Further Education and Training Bill will deliver accountability of further education colleges. It will borrow from the community colleges model in America and will mean that there is greater individual choice. At the same time, more money will be spent on learning and skills as a result of the record investment in further education colleges— [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) has new figures on unemployment, I shall be happy to hear them.
	The new deal has helped 3.6 million people to find jobs. It has helped 1.8 million people into work and 980,000 people— [Interruption.] What is the point of abolishing the new deal when it helps people to get jobs?
	I turn now to the issues at the centre of any economic debate: tax and spending as a whole. In 1992, when I became shadow Chancellor, we decided that we must have discipline in our party about public spending commitments. We decided that no shadow Minister should make public spending commitments that were not approved, and that we would freeze public spending for the first two years of a Labour Government to achieve the stability necessary for the economy.
	The Conservatives have adopted a fiscal rule that suggests that they would cut public spending by£17 billion this year and by £16 billion next year. If it were across the economic cycle, the figure would be even higher and nearer to the No Turning Back group's £32 billion or £31 billion. I would like to read out some of the commitments made by the Conservatives on public spending.
	The Conservative shadow Chancellor says that he wants stability and to keep spending low, yet there are promises of more money for the Home Office, more money for the police who should have higher basic salaries, more money for border police, more money for 24-hour security at ports, more money to invest in drug rehab, more money for what are called "relationship centres", more money for roads, for voluntary bodies, for occupational therapists—and those are the commitments made only by the Leader of the Opposition. It sounds awfully like a Liberal party shopping list.
	I have also looked into the Queen's Speech debates and at the discipline that the shadow Chancellor has been able to exercise over his colleagues. We should remember that this is the party whose fiscal rule requires cuts in public expenditure, yet there is more money for the NHS promised by the health spokesman on 22 November, more money promised for the Home Office by the shadow Home Secretary on 23 November, more money from the shadow Transport Secretary on 23 November, more money demanded by the shadow Defence Secretary, the shadow children's Minister, the shadow Energy Minister and the Opposition Whip. There is more money for hauliers and for rail, for example. Clearly, none has any discipline in respect of the commitments made and it is no use the shadow Chancellor press releasing his commitment to stability if at the same time all his shadow Ministers are announcing that they have to spend more.
	The Conservatives put up a website last week about borrowing and people personally getting into debt. It said that it might sound "boring", but that people should remember to keep to their "spending budget"—and I suspect that that is what the Conservative party should be doing. The problem is that the Tories want to tell people who doubt their credentials that they are in favour of public services so they will spend more, but then they want to tell the No Turning Back and Cornerstone groups that they are in favour of tax cuts so they will spend less.

Gordon Brown: The figure is 1,856, reduced to 1,500. The hon. Member for Wellingborough must know that, in the first few months of a Labour Government, the growth rate of the economy and the employment creation through the new deal were such that we were getting people back to work incredibly quickly.  [ Interruption. ] I am not going to apologise for giving the number of people unemployed in May 1997—1,850.
	I have just listed all the Conservative party's spending commitments, but what about all the tax commitments? One would think that the shadow Chancellor, having at one and the same time allowed spending commitments to grow even though he has the third fiscal rule, would be bearing down heavily on tax commitments, but what about the Forsyth commission, which he says sets the framework for the future? There are £21 billion of tax cuts in the Forsyth report. So there is a range from £21 billion to the Cornerstone group's £40 billion and the No Turning Back group's £50 billion, while the right hon. Member for Wokingham, who is chairman of the economic competitiveness group, suggests sums of even more than £50 billion. How do those figures add up?
	Let me tell the House that I remember exactly what happened. I have the Conservatives' election manifesto from 1992. What did they promise then? They said that they would bring stability. [Hon. Members: "More!"] They said that they would cut taxes; they said that they would raise spending; they said that they would lower spending as a share of national income. They said that all those things could happen at one and the same time. What did they call that in 1992? They called it sharing the proceeds of growth. They said that a dividend would be paid between tax cuts and spending rises.
	The Conservatives are in favour of recycling. What we are seeing is the recycling of the 1992 promises. They talk about stability; they say that there will be tax cuts; they promise spending rises; they say that they will bear down on spending; and it ends up in what happened after 1992. It ends up not in tax cuts, but in 22 tax rises; it ends up not in spending rises, but in massive spending cuts; and it ends up in the shambles of an economic recession, with 15 per cent. interest rates, thousands losing their jobs, mortgage repossessions and negative equity.
	Perhaps the House should be aware that, whenthe final humiliation came in 1992 —[ Interruption. ] Conservative Members do not believe that it was a humiliation. Well, 15 per cent. interest rates were a humiliation. When the final humiliation came in 1992, who was standing next to Lord Lamont, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer? It was none other than the principal economic adviser, who is now the Leader of the Opposition. The Conservative party cannot face up to the country's challenges. The Conservatives cannot face up to the challenges if they go for tax cuts, spending rises and no discipline. They cannot face up to the big challenges on education and training. They cannot face up to the big challenges on poverty and dealing with public services. They cannot face up to the big challenges on skills and the innovative future that our economy needs. The only party that can face upto the challenges is the Labour party and this Government . [Hon. Members: "More!"]

Vincent Cable: I first wish to focus on the second paragraph of the Queen's Speech, which is about economic stability, and then on two of the big long-term issues that have been presaged bySir Nick Stern's report on climate change and by the Turner report on pensions, both of which have given rise to two important Bills and, indeed, to long-term policy.
	When I made this speech last year, I started by congratulating the Conservative spokesman on having acceded to his new post. I note that he is receiving at least some good advice, because I see that quite a few of my policies and speeches appear in his after a short time lag. Most recently, my 10-point plan on debt reappeared as the Conservatives' six-point plan on debt. I had been puzzled as to what was wrong with the other four points until I worked out that they all related to problems concerning mortgages and repossessions, which may be an area of policy over which the Conservatives wish to draw a veil.
	My main point of difference with the shadow Chancellor at the moment relates to my lack of a sense of humour. I fail to appreciate what is hilarious about the Conservative website describing people who have got into debt as "feckless tossers". I thought perhaps that, with my advancing years, the problem was that I had lost my schoolboy sense of humour. However, having tried the words out on various age cohorts including schoolboys, I realise that they do not see what is funny about them either.
	As far as the Chancellor is concerned, I realise that the boxing metaphor is getting a little bit worn. He may recall in a way that is perhaps not terribly helpful to him that, before Lennox Lewis came along, British heavyweight boxers were notoriously ineffective. Indeed, they eventually earned the nickname of "horizontal heavyweights". That is how they tended to appear on the canvas. However, after an hour of Punch and Judy politics, the Chancellor has shown a certain talent for that. Indeed, beating up Judy is something that he is a master of, but we now need to move on to a slightly more serious level. I apologise if I move into that vein.
	I first wish to focus on the issue of economic stability. The obvious points are stark.

Vincent Cable: Most of us in the House, whatever our party, would agree that it would be foolish to rule out the option for ever, which I think is the right hon. Gentleman's option. I am not sure that that fits with the views of those on the Conservative Front Bench.
	Let me return to the issue of stability. The Chancellor is absolutely right—and this is a sensible place to start—to say that we are in a successful economy and that we should be proud of that. I have never quite understood why the Conservatives have such difficulty saying that and claiming some of the credit, rather than arguing that we are in a constant state of economic collapse. The British economy is in good shape and, as the International Monetary Fund said recently, our rate of growth is somewhat above the G7 average and certainly more stable. The issue is not whether that happens—it clearly is happening—but whether it can be sustained. The question is whether the growth that we have at the moment is sustainable or more similar to the experience that we had in the 1950s, which I grew up with as a teenager, when we also had more than a decade of stable growth, low unemployment and low inflation. However, we were building up imbalances in the economy and they eventually spilled over in the form of balance of payments crises. We cannot have them any more because we have a floating exchange rate.
	None the less, serious imbalances are building up in the British economy and it will be a major challenge for the Chancellor and whoever succeeds him to deal with them. One of them relates to public expenditure, which is growing significantly faster than the British economy. We have no quarrel with the increase in public expenditure that has occurred—or much of it; much of it has been valuable—but there is an issue of sustainability. The other big challenge is that of personal debt.
	On public expenditure, the Chancellor challenged the Conservative spokesman about some of his spending commitments, and he was right to do that. However, the Chancellor is also making major spending commitments that will be difficult to sustain over the difficult periods ahead. Public expenditure will not be able to grow much faster than the British economy over the next period.
	I want to take the Chancellor over some of the spending commitments that the Government are entering into and challenge him to justify them. He started his speech by referring, I think with some pride, to the spending that the Government were undertaking on what he called security. That includes the war in Iraq. We have a different perspective on that, because we regard the £4 billion spent on that war as having been wasted. He may say, "That's water under the bridge. Let's look at the future." Last weekend, the Chancellor committed the Government to spending an extra £100 million on reconstruction. One might say, "Fine. That's good. Whatever our views on the war, surely we are in favour of reconstruction." I am challenging that. I do not know whether the Chancellor is aware, but a few weeks ago, the Iraqi Government committed themselves to the latest big tranche of spending: a total of $40 billion, which is more than£20 billion, in reparation payments. That is Iraqi oil money. It is not being used for reconstruction or to raise standards for people in Iraq; it is being used to pay reparation for damage supposedly incurred in the first Gulf war. Much of it is going to Kuwait, not just for the damage that was inflicted by Saddam Hussein but for continuing penalty payments. Bizarrely, much of it is going to private companies such as Halliburton, Bechtel and even Kentucky Fried Chicken. They are being paid compensation for profits that they lost as a result of the first Gulf war. My question to the Chancellor is: why should the British Exchequer—the British taxpayer—be plugging holes in the Iraqi budget when the Iraqi Government are making those enormous, obscene payments? There is no justification.
	Let me take another heading under the issue of security. The National Audit Office recently produced a compilation of defence estimates: the 20 biggest projects under the Ministry of Defence—20 big projects costing £20 billion. It was subsequently presented by Lord Drayson as a great success story. However, it emerged from the analysis that the projects were collectively£2.6 billion over-budget and cumulatively 36 years behind schedule. Clearly, if there is going to be a tightening of Government spending, some of that stuff will have to be looked at. We have argued, for example, that some of the third tranche of the Eurofighter project, which is estimated to cost £16 billion—although we do not really know, because the figures have been concealed under commercial secrecy—has to be scrapped. The Government are going to have to face up to that too. Sooner rather than later, we want an analysis of where that spending is going.
	To take another set of spending commitments, I have recently been trying to trawl through parliamentary questions about what is happening in relation to Government computer projects. The projects currently in operation that I have had a reply about—about half—have a cumulative overrun of 47 years. The overrun costs are enormous. Much of that expenditure has to be analysed critically. We would question the usefulness of continuing to press ahead with the full NHS IT project at a time when the NHS budget is under a great deal of pressure.
	We have had a debate about the principles of the ID cards scheme. The Home Secretary referred to it in his contribution to the debate on the Queen's Speech. However, we need to ask questions about the costs and who will pay for the scheme. The Government have never properly answered that. It has always been understood that as long as the scheme was voluntary, it would be paid for by user charges. However, when the former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke), was in post, he indicated that when the scheme became compulsory—as it would in the next Parliament—it would be made free or would be heavily subsidised at a cost of somewhere between £5 billion and £20 billion. We have never had a proper explanation of where that money is going to come from, how it will be accounted for, or how it can be justified.
	My colleagues and I thought that the Prime Minister's energy report, which was published by the Cabinet Office in 2003, was an admirable summary of all the issues involved in energy policy. It covered the ground well. Security of supply, energy poverty and the environmental cost were well balanced. The report came to the conclusion that new nuclear power was unnecessary. A year later the policy changed and we now have an open-ended commitment to supporting new nuclear power. Again, it is unclear how that will be funded. Much of it will happen through the charging policies of the electricity utilities. The Government appear to have entered into a new set of commitments in relation to decommissioning and, possibly, the acquisition of land for the new plants to be established. Again, that has to be factored into public expenditure.

Vincent Cable: Some of us expressed scepticism about the costs from the very beginning, but we wished to be constructive and wanted the Olympics to succeed. Clearly, however, we must be prudent about costs, although it is clear that the Government have not been.
	Apart from public spending growth, the other element of unsustainability in the economy relates to personal debt. We have had a remarkable recent trend of consumer expenditure running ahead of the growth of the national economy in every single year. One of the consequences of that has been that the savings ratio has fallen from 10 per cent. to less than 5 per cent. A further consequence has been the substantial build-up of personal debt. The aggregate figure, which is about 150 per cent. of income, is the highest in the developed world by a long way and the highest in British history. Much of that has been necessitated by the enormous boom in house prices, with 85 per cent. of that debt secured against houses. Of course, much of the problem is a matter between private borrowers and private companies, rather than a matter for the Government, but the Government could and should be doing many things.
	Over the years, the Government have talked about promoting generic financial advice, but very little has happened. They have talked about financial education, and although a little bit is happening as part of maths education, we have seen little else. There seemed to be possibilities for debt pooling, but that has not happened on any scale. We are now faced with a possible collapse in the insurance market for mortgages, which would expose many people to vast liabilities and possible repossession owing to the failure of the market. The Government should be focusing on those matters, but they are not.
	In the last part of my speech, I wish to refer to big, long-term issues, which, if properly handled, could take us very far forward. The first such issue is the response to Stern. The Government were fortunate to have access to Nick Stern, who is probably one of the really outstanding economists in the world. His analysis is outstanding and recognised internationally. The Stern report came up with several clear conclusions: action is needed urgently; action is needed initially in the developed world; and we in this country have responsibility for sharing the lead on that action. In due course, we will have a system of internationally traded permits at the European and global levels, but in the meantime, national policy will largely focus on taxation. We have led the way in that debate, and the Conservatives are following, although it is unclear exactly what they are advocating.
	We have a difference with the Government, however. It may be an artificial disagreement, but I hope that in the course of this debate it will be clarified. The Government have criticised us, and the Conservatives, for arguing for environmental taxes on the grounds that there is a fundamental incompatibility between raising taxes to change behaviour and raising taxes to raise revenue. I ask the Chancellor to reflect on something that I am sure he would consider a success, the climate change levy. The levy has undoubtedly had a significant effect in reducing carbon emissions; there are good independent academic studies to support that assertion. It has also raised in total about £4 billion in revenue, which has been fed back in tax cuts elsewhere. It seems an entirely sensible precedent, and I am at a loss to understand why the Government have such difficulty with the idea of applying that principle more widely.
	I conclude with a few words on Turner and pensions. There is a broad consensus on the overriding architecture. We all accept that there has to be improvement in the basic system of state pensions and it has to be offset by delayed pension ages. We all agree that there needs to be a new system of state second pension provision with employer, employee and Government support. Our disagreements are partly about timing.
	We take the view that it is unnecessary to depart from Turner's recommendations. The Government seem to have brought forward by five years the later retirement age and postponed by five years the age at which people will be entitled to earnings linking with their pension. Of course there are costs involved in that, and there are tough choices to be made. We believe that the Government have ducked some of those tough choices in failing to deal, for example, with the issue of public sector pensions. We also disagree with the Government's decision to depart from Turner's conclusions in respect of women, or more generally the citizens' chest for pensions.
	The big philosophical disagreement, however, is about the role of means-testing. We take the view that the longer the postponement of the improved state pension, the greater the number of people who will be sucked into means-testing over a long period, and that will have very damaging economic consequences. The Government, and particularly the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, of whom I have asked questions on this matter several times, believe that there is no significant disincentive effect from a marginal rate of tax and benefit withdrawal of 40 per cent., but we believe that there is. We find itvery difficult to square the Government's relative agnosticism on this question with their insistence that they must retain a system of 40 per cent. tax relief for high earners. If incentives work at the top end of the scale, why do they not work at the bottom? If incentives are important in saving for pensions, why are not the Government much more concerned about the damaging impact of means-testing?
	The Chancellor will shortly have the opportunityto present his pre-Budget report. It could be an opportunity for crowing and displaying self-satisfaction, and he will be entitled to a certain measure of that, but I hope that, in the national interest and in the interest of his own credibility as Prime Minister, if that is what he becomes, he will start to acknowledge that there are very serious problems of imbalances in the British economy which will have to be addressed, and that there are big long-term challenges in environmental taxation and pensions policy which the Government are so far ducking.

Philip Dunne: Which would the hon. Gentleman regard as the more overtly political: making a statement, as did the Minister for Trade, that he would give up a day's salary, or telling customers of Farepak—I am doing this with my constituents—that if their agents paid their subscription by credit card, they are likely to be protected under the Consumer Credit Act 2006 and can get their money back? Indeed, one of my constituents has already got more than £3,000 back.

Tony Wright: People want to know how this could happen and what we are going to do about it.
	I have a letter from a woman in my constituency who says that she is extremely pleased to hear what all of us are doing about Farepak. Like other hon. Members, I am trying to do some things locally as well as encouraging people to contribute to the national campaign. She writes:
	"Since my last email to you, we have had very bad luck. My husband took action to salvage a small amount of money so that our three children aged one, eight and nine could at least have some presents. He worked day shifts and night sifts and even call-outs but sadly on Sunday 5 November he had an accident at work and was taken to hospital, where they attempted to save his finger. As you can see, he is unable to go back to work. I am now totally devastated and really have no choice but to tell my children that Christmas will have to be cancelled this year. I hope that the Farepak bosses and HBOS can sleep at night because I know I can't with worry."
	The point of mentioning that is not that it is a case of individual hardship; there are thousands of such cases and thousands of families in this position. What they want to know is how a company could behave in that way. How could a company continue to take in money, knowing that it was going to go somewhere else? How could a bank have withdrawn support, knowing what the consequences would be? We have discovered in the past few days that a firm of administrators set up a premium rate telephone line so that it will make some money out of the people who phone up to find out what has happened to their money. How can that be?
	I am not surprised that some people are saying that the Farepak episode has given us a glimpse into the unsavoury face of corporate life. It has given us a glimpse into a trend whereby some people in our society behave in ways that enable them to get extremely rich, while many are desperately poor. The gap between those two groups is getting ever greater. A disconnection, which is not only financial but moral, is setting in between a world of mega-greed, about which we seem to say little on occasions such as this, and a world of desperate poverty. The Farepak episode has drawn back the veil, enabling us to glimpse what kind of world this is. The Government are rightly asked by people who have suffered as a result of the collapse of Farepak to do all that they can to remedy this market failure.

John Redwood: It is obvious that a more lightly taxed and better-regulated area—which I think southern Ireland now is, in some respects—will do much better. That is a simple example, which the Government ought to study and act on very quickly.
	There are many other areas in which the Chancellor seems now to accept that work needs to be done. The Prime Minister has a strategy unit studying all this, and we are told that the Chancellor's own reports are imminent. Why has it taken almost 10 years for the Government to realise that we have a transport crisis in this country? It is no good their saying that there was not enough investment in the railways 35 years ago. There has not been enough investment in any kind of transport for the last decade. It was this Government who cancelled the road schemes. It is this Government who have come up with no new main rail scheme at all: they merely finished off the channel link that we had already introduced. It is this Government who have not come up with any new tube line, unlike the last Conservative Government, who initiated a major new line. Absolutely nothing has been happening on this Government's watch in terms of major investment in transport.
	I think the Government have now realised, after nine years or more, that our big problem is a shortage of transport of all kinds. It is no good taking the route suggested by the Deputy Prime Minister, who said that the problem could be dealt with by our switching modes—making it very difficult for people to drive around in their cars and vans, so that they would go shopping by train and transport their goods as rail freight. Given that the railways account for only about 6 per cent. of journey miles undertaken, even if the Government could double their size that would deal with only a couple of years' increase in travel in a strongly growing economy. The Government must realise that while we need more railway capacity, we also need much more road capacity. If the Government wish to be serious about reducing carbon emissions, they must understand that making traffic flow more swiftly is a way of doing that. The main problem of carbon emissions for road transport is the number of cars, lorries and vans that are stuck in traffic jams, thus creating a great deal more pollution.
	Another problem is that the Government heap regulation upon regulation on our poor economy. That is why the trend rate of growth in productivity and output per head is slowing under this Government: the extra burdens of tax and regulation are proving too great. It is why we have lost more than a million manufacturing jobs on the Chancellor's watch so far. The Chancellor never bothers to tell the House about that figure, although he used to be very interested in manufacturing job losses when he was in opposition. He always told us that he would follow a policy that changed all that, but in many ways his record is far worse than that of previous Governments, with over a million jobs gone and all those interventions—all the extra regulation and taxation—getting in the way of manufacturers' ability to flourish and expand their businesses here.
	Of course we need a major deregulation programme, but all we ever get from the Government are statements of good will and good intention. We are told that they will act at some point, but I believe that since the Prime Minister announced his initiative a further 5,000 regulations have been added to the statute book. I do not suppose the Minister can recall the names of any of the regulations that the Government have struck off, so few and so unimportant were they. We need the Government to do something like what the Dutch have done. They have in place, and working very effectively, a system of cutting the regulatory burden imposed by each Department year on year by setting targets.
	Normally this Government, under this Chancellor, love targets. The Treasury loves anything that enables it to put its fingers into the pies of other Departments, so why does it not take on this task, and set regulatory budgets, which will lead to a decline in regulatory costs year after year? So much regulation achieves the opposite of what it sets out to achieve. So much of it produces very little in the way of benefit compared with the enormous cost that it imposes.
	On the energy problem, I do not know when the Government will respond to the obvious pain of the heavy energy-using industries, whose representatives have been coming to this House for many months to lobby MPs of all political persuasions. The price of energy in Britain is far too expensive compared with places such as Holland, let alone lower wage areas of the world. That is why we are losing big new investments such as that in extra steel capacity. Such investors would rather go to a place like Holland where the gas supplies are more reliable and the price is a lot cheaper than here in the United Kingdom.
	On this Government's watch, we have in terms of energy gone from being a relatively low-cost country to being a high-cost and uncertain supply country. On this Government's watch, we have had no proper response on how they will fill the gap as and when the nuclear power stations have to be retired, and as the easy supplies from our sector of the North sea dwindle or no longer meet the requirements of our gas-using industries, homes and offices.
	We desperately need policy now from this Government on energy, but all we have had is a weak statement of intent and an expression of the wish to consult and have another public debate on the nuclear issue. We are beyond the point where we need a debate; we are at the point where we need regulatory decisions and other decisions from the Government, and ways in which the private sector can then get on and make the necessary investments.
	I suspect that the Economic Secretary to the Treasury is already thinking that he can now add up some figures to show that what is wanted is more railway investment, more road investment and more energy investment and that that can all be put down to the public sector. But please will those on the Treasury Bench be a little less juvenile on this occasion? Most, if not all, of that investment could be put in through private sector activity. We know that people want to spend more on transport. We see them spending fortunes on private transport. They spend a great deal on new vans, new cars and new lorries because they feel that that is the only option that they have for many of their journeys and business tasks. They are prepared to spend, but the Government have to grant the planning permissions, create the framework and provide the rules for infrastructure investment, because infrastructure is important, and there is a need for it to extend across the country, which obviously affects interests around the country.
	Investment in energy should come wholly from the private sector. Why is that not happening at present? Because the Government are not giving a certain sound on the trumpet in respect of how the rules will be worked out, what the pricing mechanisms will be, which planning permissions will be available and which technologies are favoured. It is up to the Government to make clearer sounds, and private investment will then follow.
	One of the very few positive moments in the Chancellor's speech came when he said that he was going to tell us something about improving skills in Britain, but he then went off on yet another rant about some statement made by some Conservative Back Bencher, which obviously fascinated him rather more. It would have been good to have heard from the Chancellor about what he is going to do about the5.3 million people on benefits, many of whom would like, or need, jobs. We know about the unemployed; we have already heard in this debate about the plight of the unemployed and rising unemployment. But there are many other people, such as those on single-parent benefit and disability benefit, who would like jobs of a kind, and who could make a contribution, but they are not managing to get those jobs.
	We are told that the Government wish to do something about that. What are they going to do about it? Ten years on, have they yet found the magic key to the door? Will they do something to improve the quality and attractiveness of vocational skills? Will they get rid of some of the awful bureaucracy that stands between the employer and the potential student and the vocational training course? Will they do more to strengthen the vocational strand for 14 to 16-year-olds in schools? A few schools are doing well—as is one in my constituency—but others have not copied what they do or followed on from that.
	When will the Government do more to help higher education? We have some very fine universities in this country, and they remain high up in the world league tables, but the Chancellor must have noticed that Harvard is getting into a league of its own, given the amount of money it raises and its success not only in attracting money, but in investing that money very well. I suspect we in Britain need to freshen-up the range of tax reliefs to private donors to universities, because we need to strengthen the voluntary principle and the endowment funding of our universities; that is falling a long way behind the levels of private endowment that the leading US institutions enjoy.
	Why does that matter? It matters because if people want to have a top university, they have to be able to pay top dollar to get the best brains to become faculty members. If they wish to have a top university, they need to attract the most talented students from anywhere in the world, and some of them come from very poor families, and if they can offer bursaries, scholarships, travel grants and so forth, that helps to attract such talent.
	Will the Chancellor also have a word with the Home Office about such people's access to visas? Genuine students have difficulties in getting visas to enter our country, which puts them off and means that they would rather go to the United States of America. For example, there can be difficulties in them getting a visa for one year of working after they have graduated in Britain—because they wish to get the experience as well as the academic qualification—before they go home, where they wish to go. The Government could take an interest in practical measures and in doing something, if they were not spending all their time reading Conservative websites and Back-Bench Conservative Members' speeches.
	We find it very flattering that everything we say is of such enormous significance. But the Government must understand that they are, believe it or not, the Government. They are responsible for the lack of transport capacity, the lack of energy capacity and the lack of tax competitiveness that is now getting worse in this country, as well as for the over-burdensome regulation, and for the lack of good vocational skills programmes, which could get many of those millions who are currently not in the work force back into that.

Michael Connarty: It was a pleasure to listen to the grown-up speech of the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), which was much better than the childish rant of the shadow Chancellor, the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne). I do not know what has come over the right hon. Gentleman, but I think that he should be brought back to the Front Bench to make a serious contribution, rather than remain stuck on the Back Benches. I also enjoyed the contributionof my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright), and I might refer to some of the things that he said later.
	I shall not pick up on all the points made by the right hon. Member for Wokingham, but I wish to raise certain matters. It is stated in the second paragraph of the Queen's Speech:
	"A stable economy is the foundation of a fair and prosperous society. My Government will continue to maintain low inflation, sound public finances and high employment."
	The Chancellor should be commended for doing that over the past decade. The Queen's Speech also states that the Government will try
	"to help the most vulnerable members of society."
	That is, in a sense, why I rise to speak.
	It is clear that some of the issues that I wish to raise are Department of Trade and Industry issues, but I notice that no DTI day has been allocated in the Queen's Speech debate. I hope, however, that the Chancellor has much influence on that and other parts of the Government, and that he will have even more in the very near future.
	Regardless of what is said in the course of all the yah-boo politics, and in all the factional bids for this power or that power or for spending on this or on that, people I talk to in the part of the country that I come from and elsewhere recognise that we have had a stable and growing economy over the past decade, whereas there have been some heavy storms in other parts of the world, and there has been a difficult period for the European Union when the euro did not take off as it should have and we did not get the growth that we expected. The Chancellor has seen all of that through, as well as problems that arose in other economies, and our economy has continued to grow.
	The economy in my constituency is such that people are not rushing abroad. INEOS, the largest privately owned company in the UK, has bought the olefins and derivatives business of BP and it has now committed itself to spending £60 million on what is probably the world's largest biofuels plant, in Grangemouth. That will be a flagship venture for many others in low-carbon technologies.

Michael Connarty: I have to disagree with my hon. Friend—I shall call him my hon. Friend because I know that his motives in this regard are good—because he is not correct. He must admit that Scotland is a much more attractive part of the United Kingdom to live in than most others. Although the south-east has a growing economy, there is congestion and young people working in professions such as teaching and social services and in the more minor professions, which do not pay the large wages that the City pays, cannot afford to buy a house. In Scotland, however, we have got the balance right and growth has been steady. There are people in my constituency who are in work, education or higher education and were not when the Conservatives were in power. That slow, steady growth has meant that we have not had the boom and bust in the housing market that England experienced. We should be proud of what has been achieved. I know that my hon. Friend thinks that independence for Scotland would mean a new start and that things would be completely different, but, as an economist, I disagree. The parameters of this growth are based on a United Kingdom economy, not on a small economy and country of 5 million people, most of whose large companies are located elsewhere.
	What could threaten our economic stability is the confusion generated by the Conservatives. They are sending out various messages—cuts of £20 million,£30 million, or £50 million; no cuts; get out of the European Union; stay in the European Union—that could create instability. Let them adopt a grown-up approach and take the issues on board. Let us have a serious debate, unlike what we heard earlier in response to the Chancellor's speech; that way, we might make some progress. People can see, however, that the economy is on a stable trajectory, and that it is not threatened by the confusion that marks the Conservative party's policy.
	I always remember an admonition that is credited to a much higher moral source than me. The Bible says, "If you do this to these the littlest of my children, you do this unto me." I do not think that "littlest" means just children. People often say that that passage is about kids, but it is about those who are devoid of power, wealth or income. Correspondence that I have received shows that the Department for Work and Pensions is not willing to prevent housing departments from seizing people's benefits to pay for housing arrears, thereby causing the downward spiral into poverty that occurs when people lose their jobs and cannot keep up their payments. Indeed, in some cases people cannot even make the relevant claim. We need to intervene and to do something about the problem. The blind, for example, cannot claim the higher rate mobility allowance. A personal assistant of mine who suffered from retinitis pigmentosa went blind. That he could be denied higher rate mobility allowance, which would have enabled him to get around, is a joke. We are not taking this issue sufficiently seriously.
	It is a question of redistribution, and in that regard I want to raise a number of issues: the national minimum wage and tips, the working time directive, the temporary workers directive, and the treatment ofUK pensioners living overseas. If I have time, I shall also discuss Farepak. As Members know, I tabled a ten-minute Bill on the national minimum wage. All those whom I spoke to said that they did not know that when we add a service charge in a restaurantwhen paying by credit card or cheque, it does not go to the person who served us. By law, it belongs to the proprietor. The reality is that regulation 31(1)(e) of the National Minimum Wage Regulations 1999, which were passed by this Labour Government, says that any money paid through the payroll—be it a gratuity, a service charge or a cover charge—counts toward the minimum wage. I have asked the Prime Minister about this issue and spoken to the DTI and the Low Pay Commission, but they will not amend the regulation.
	What really offends me is that the Inland Revenue has yet again sent out form E24 (2006)—in fact, it was incorrectly sent out as form E24 (2005)—which effectively tells employers to put such tips through the payroll, so that they can be charged to the minimum wage. It also says that if a tronc—in other words, a kitty—is paid through the payroll, that counts toward the minimum wage too. I have been to restaurants in Glasgow and in London with very expensive charges. Their menus state that there is a voluntary 12.5 per cent. charge, which goes to the workers. When I quietly asked those workers about that, they said, "Yes, it does—and it is part of, not on top of, our minimum wage." I want this Labour Government to do something for labour—for the least well paid in this economy, who are living on the minimum wage and who often work very long hours. Their proprietors are paying their wages with their tips. It is up to this Government to show that they are a Labour Government and that they do care for "the littlest" in our society. They must change regulation 31(1)(e) and close that loophole.
	Once again, we have failed to get an agreement on the working time directive at European level. The UK was told by other countries that we have to name the day when 48 hours means 48 hours. The Minister with responsibility for such issues tried to do a deal on 60 or 65 hours. It is time that our Government accepted that we are the black sheep of the family in Europe on this issue; it is we who are holding back agreement on the working time directive. It is time that they gave a date—

Jon Cruddas: By contrast with the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), in this Queen's Speech debate I want to contest the terms of our debate on security. I will talk about economic elements affecting security and insecurity in communities such as mine. I want to discuss whether the new, independent statistical system will give us a new entry point into issues such as the massive demographic change in poorer parts of urban communities. That change is driven by movements of people, especially A8 European nationals. My comments will be in contrast to the calibration of the security agenda in the Queen's Speech, which is driven by the terror agenda, migration, and issues to do with criminality.
	Anyone who went to my constituency and asked about security and insecurity would get stuck into three issues straight away. The first is housing insecurity and pressures on the demand for low-cost social housing units. The second is labour market insecurities, and in particular the perceived race to the bottom caused by the deregulation of labour markets, and driven by patterns of migration. The third is access to quality health care, partly as a consequence of primary care cuts. However, the overriding element contributing to insecurity is the community's inability to comprehend the sheer velocity of change caused by patterns of migration to our borough. That raises big issues of public policy, resource allocation and the economics of the Queen's Speech, as set out today.
	I am interested in the independent statistical system, and I am keen to raise a few issues on class, migration and race. I regularly ask the Office for National Statistics what the population of my borough is, and it regularly tells me that it is 164,000, and has been since 2001. Our borough has the lowest-cost housing in Greater London, and as a consequence it exerts a magnetic pull, in terms of migration within the city's boundaries. In addition—this is a classic hallmark of patterns of migration to cities—migrant communities have moved into the lowest-cost housing market in search of low-cost housing. The cumulative effect is that the population is growing dramatically, but that occurs off the radar of public policy-making, which remains attached to an increasingly out-of-date census formula.
	The only statistical series that begin to catch such movements of people are the education rolls. From 2003 until 2005-06, the story shows that the white population in our community was dropping by about3 or 4 per cent. a year. If there was a pro rata effect across the whole borough, whose population is between 160,000 and 170,000, the change in ethnicity—from white, indigenous English to black African families—would be between 4,000 and 5,000. Analysis of the education rolls shows an expansion in the head count of the population, too.
	There are massive movements of people in terms of both the qualitative make-up of the community and the total head count, yet the state is attached to a census formula that gives a completely different picture of the communities we represent. That has huge implications in communities such as mine, where there are enduring inequalities in health and access to public services, as well as long-term legacies owing to poverty and social immobility. The population is growing faster in real terms than the state is refinancing public services. As a consequence, we can make a strong case that things are in decline in real terms, because the social wage is in decline, especially when analysed alongside the effects of patterns of migration and labour market deregulation.
	It will be interesting to see whether the independent statistical system will be able to grapple with such issues in future. I realise that there are the beginnings of a central locus of analysis in relation to the future comprehensive spending review, but I want to throw out a few questions about how we can reconcile that with the real-time demographic picture, especially in the poorer urban communities that take the strain of massive population flows. How can we adjust public policy making so that we go with the grain of those movements rather than simply offering diminishing returns in our understanding of, and investment in, those communities, because of the increasing rupture between the formal apparatus of state decision making and the reality of population flows?
	ONS analysis shows that the rate of population growth at present is the fastest since the 1960s, despite residents leaving at record levels. By June 2005, the population of the UK was about 60.2 million; in the preceding year, growth was 0.6 per cent., or 375,000 net. In cities such as London, the poorest communities take the strain of such increases. The global challenge in respect of migration posed in the Queen's Speech is to deal with those issues in a public policy agenda that explicitly tries to confront patterns of inequality and the problems of social cohesion. Only on the basis of modern, real-time demography can we begin to deal with such issues through investment in education or health, or helping local authorities in their strategy for managing changes in the community to ensure social cohesion.
	I shall give some examples of the effects of labour market movements to show why such policies would be important in helping communities such as mine. As I said, there has been a massive change in the qualitative make-up of the population, as well as the total number. Many new residents are employed by employment agencies, which has caused real pressures at the bottom of the labour market. At one of my surgeries a few weeks ago, the first case involved some residents who came to see me about east European gang workers being paid £15 a day on a public contract. As that is substantially below the minimum wage, they were rightly concerned about the consequential effects on broader labour market conditions in the area.
	The fifth case involved a roofer whose hourly wage rate had dropped £2.50 in six months. The penultimate case that night was a guy who wanted to know what I could do about the shed opposite his house. I found out that the person had put a cooker in the shed at the bottom of his garden and rented it out to eight east European guys who were hot-bedding in it. They were in a labour gang employed on contracts in the local community.
	I raise those issues to show how demographic movements have consequential effects on other forms of economic activity in communities such as mine, especially in the labour market. Putting that alongside the consumption of public services can create real, material tensions in respect of the allocation of resources and labour market competition in some of the more challenging parts of cities such as London.
	Such material conditions account for part of the rise of the far right, which seeks to pit community against community. However, the real issue is whether a mature debate on the Queen's Speech and the Government's economic strategy can actually build a real-time demographic picture of communities such as mine, and offer both resource allocation solutions that anticipate population movements and a labour market strategy that stops the contemporary race to the bottom, which creates and fuels real tensions.
	When my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk talked about the temporary workers directive and raised concerns about the blocking minority in Brussels, he was right on the money. The type of policy remedy that I suggested is critical to supply different footings for the labour market economy to neutralise the seductive messages of the far right, which argues that competition at the bottom of the labour market is racialising the community owing to the threat posed by A8 migrants. I am, of course, aware of some of the debates in the European Community about the 12-month threshold, but such policy initiatives are critical if the Government are to be proactive in choking off the downward pressures at the bottom of the labour market, which fuel difficulties and tensions in communities such as mine, creating a breeding-ground for political extremism.

Charles Kennedy: It is a genuine pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dagenham (Jon Cruddas). From earlier exchanges in a different context this year, I well know the knowledge and insight that he brings to his own area, particularly in respect of the pernicious activities of the far right. That was acknowledged recently when one of  The Spectator awards went in his direction, largely because of the quality of insight and personal courage that he brought to his activities, which was very much on display again this evening. As he has had one happy competitive moment of late, who knows, he might have another in due course. We shall watch with interest and wish him well. That, however, is certainly outwith the remit of the Queen's Speech, so I shall not stray on to it.
	As I listened to the opening exchanges with the Chancellor earlier this afternoon, I reflected on the fact that what has generally been regarded as a not overly heavy Queen's Speech this year leaves a fair amount of flexibility for changes at the top of the Government during this parliamentary Session. My mind could not help but go back to discussions that the Prime Minister and I have had, at his behest, over the past few years. The Prime Minister tried to dissuade me from Liberal Democrat support for a referendum on the single European currency, which he thought was a daft idea. When that was put on the shelf, he tried to dissuade me from Liberal Democrat support for a referendum on the proposed new European constitution. At that time, I was told, there was no way either Schröder or Chirac would touch such proposition with a bargepole, yet, lo and behold, a few weeks later they did.
	It was pointed out that advance announcements from the Government were destabilising as they led to paralysis. The irony was that the Prime Minister's somewhat premature decision on the night of the Hartlepool by-election to tell the country that he did not intend to be around, even if he won the general election, itself generated a fair amount of paralysis, which will be overcome only when the change takes place.
	In the context of that transition, I want to put one or two pleas to the likely next head of the Government, the present Chancellor, in the light of the proposals in the Queen's Speech. We hope that he will look at a few things afresh if he takes over the helm of government, not least the social justice agenda.
	There has been overall acknowledgement in some of the less heated moments of today's debate that overa remarkable decade in office and fairly benign macroeconomic circumstances, some credit is due to the Chancellor for helping to influence that—

Charles Kennedy: Certainly not; I am very happy where I am.
	Leaving aside the small issue of the colossal cost of Iraq—I do not intend to address that this evening, having done so only recently—the Chancellor has been spared, as we have been spared, some of the big economic shocks that derailed previous Labour and Conservative Governments. Yes, the oil price has been a difficulty, but we have not had a devaluation. Yes, conflict has cost the country a great deal of money,but overall the economy has been quite benign, comparatively speaking, and quite successful. Against that backdrop, we can have a sensible debate, even if I notice that Lord Rees-Mogg has turned his attention in his column today to what we do when there is a collapse in the housing market. I have not studied his article in detail, but if that is the force of his argument and if he is predicting that, the Chancellor can probably be well assured—given the predictive qualities of that column over many years on many issues—that it is not going to happen.
	Given the quite encouraging economic backdrops and the Chancellor's good intentions for social justice—I do not deny his good intentions on these broad policy strata—there have nevertheless been many disappointments. Without any shadow of a doubt, one such is the continuing problem of tuition fees and the disincentive effect that common sense suggests it must be having on the aspirations of some young people from lower income backgrounds who want to go on to tertiary education. What I find so ironic is that even when Ministers have justified their policy for England and Wales, they have readily acknowledged that they have not begun to attack the broader funding dilemmas of the UK university sector as a whole, which were well touched on by the chairman of the Conservative policy review, the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood). It seems to me that we are not solving the big problem, while loading in many disincentives for people who cannot be helped. I hope that in the different devolved context, the Chancellor might yet come to see the merits of the policy in Scotland. Indeed, my party colleagues are now pledging in the context of next May's elections to take the more generous policy even further forward, as it acts well.
	My second plea relates to some of the ironies of social policy affecting our older citizens. The demography is such that we know that we now have a more active older citizenry, yet the complexities of the operation of pension policy and tax and benefits policy mean that the physical well-being and good will of old people is not being utilised as much as it could be. As we look to developments in social policy for the rest of this Parliament, I hope that we will take account of the opportunities that exist. It seems a shame that greater social flexibility does not lead to more flexibility whereby older people in their 50s and 60s may dip in and out of the labour market. Perhaps they no longer want or have to work full-time, but want to work part-time without the system operating against their interests. Much more could be done.
	Over a number of years, Government and parliamentary rhetoric from all parties has seemed to encourage use of the experience that older people bring to the labour market, but what else are we doing? We seem to be presiding over the wholesale demolition of local sub-post offices, and for which group of people does that cause the most anxiety? What disincentive is that for active citizens who do not have the access that they would wish to enjoy to a wide range of services? More imaginative policies could help, but they are not adequately dealt with in the Queen's Speech.
	At the other end of the age spectrum, the Government have pledged to look again at the system of child support. I am sure that we are all often or occasionally asked the question of what vote we most regret having cast during our time in Parliament. In my case, it is a vote that I never cast—none of us did. There was an all-party agreement that the principle behind the establishment of the Child Support Agency was a good one. Without any rigour being brought to bear on the matter, we ended up with something that entered into the realms of retrospection and became more of a cash cow for the Treasury, rather than tackling what it was supposed to tackle—the social injustice of, mainly, men not being around and failing to live up to their financial responsibilities to the women and children whom they had probably walked away from. It was a terrible error in which all three UK parties were complicit, and it has gone on under successive Governments.
	I hope that the problem can be tackled more successfully this year, although, as we have argued for a number of years, it is hard to understand how meaningful reform of the CSA, so long as it continues to be structured as the CSA, will lead to the solution that we all want. Would it not be better to put it properly within the Inland Revenue system, rather than continuing with a free-standing agency that no amount of tampering and tinkering can improve? Perhaps the Minister could indicate in his reply just where the Government's thinking is up to, because even the Government have begun to allude to the fact that they might want to scrap the CSA completely. I do not what the detail of the proposal in the Queen's Speech will prove to be.

Helen Goodman: I am most grateful for this opportunity to contribute to the Queen's Speech debate. May I say what a pleasure it is to follow the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Mr. Kennedy), who gave a wide-ranging speech in his usual witty and charming manner? I will concentrate much more narrowly on tackling climate change while maintaining our competitiveness. Those two things are often presented as conflicting and contradictory, but I hope to show that we can achieve both.
	Something that astonished me about the Opposition amendment was the statement that they
	"regret the absence of strong and binding measures to tackle climate change and environmental degradation".
	It seems to me that arguably one of the most important measures in the Gracious Speech is the climate change Bill. Nothing could contrast more starkly than the weighty Stern report as the fashion-statement approach to environmental issues displayed by Opposition Members. The report is obviously right to begin with a statement of the ethical and scientific basis of the problems, but no one has really said such things more clearly or more precisely than John Locke in 1690:
	"Each man is entitled to the fruits of his labour, as long as as much and as good is left for the next."
	On science, the Stern report has made it very clear that we are now up against an exceptionally tight timetable. We have only 10 to 15 years to stabilise and reduce emissions. That is particularly important in my constituency. At the rural end of my constituency in Upper Teesdale, unique biodiversity exists that has survived from the last ice age. Plants such as the spring gentian only grow in the north Pennines area of outstanding natural beauty. Those plants and that biodiversity will be completely destroyed by global warming. It is, of course, worth noting that while humans might have strategies for mitigation and adaptation, animals cannot be expected to have strategies for adaptation.
	On the vexed issue of targets, which have been much discussed, it is quite clear that annual targets to reduce emissions are not practical. I understand that five-year targets have been proposed because they tie in very neatly with the Kyoto machinery, but we have now taken to holding four-year Parliaments, so it seems to me that, to achieve proper accountability, we need to have three to four-year targets for our climate change objectives.
	Those of us who are concerned about the environment are frequently portrayed as romantic impossibilists, but Stern has shown that there is an economic case for action. At the other end of my constituency in Bishop Auckland, we have a manufacturing base that is already changing shape and showing how a new green model for the economy can operate. We have a monthly farmers' market in Barnard Castle, where people can buy and eat local and seasonal food without the burden of air miles. We have the Farmway farmers' co-operative, which is the first link in the supply chain for biofuels that goes through to Teesside. The Glaxo plant, which is the most energy efficient one in the world, has two windmills to supply its electricity. CAA Roofing has developed a new solar wall system to trap the sun's heat for buildings. Teescraft Engineering is considering constructing wind turbines. Thorn Lighting has just decided to build a completely new plant. It has a research and development programme with Durham university for low organic lighting. That will involve the biggest change in the way that we light our houses since the invention of the light bulb. All those examples show that greening the economy can create new jobs.
	The Government's policy of supporting science and encouraging links between industry and academia is absolutely vital. The Chancellor's announcement of the energy technologies institute is one of the most forward-looking policies that we could have. We need to do more to simplify planning and building regulations, to reform the tax system and to provide one-stop advice. But the examples demonstrate that a cross-government approach is vital to ensuring that objectives lead to action.
	When we look across the board at the competitiveness of the economy, we need to consider those sectors with high energy use where the picture is obviously trickier. There are two examples in my constituency: a glass recycling plant, Potters-Ballotini, and Wienerberger's Eldon brickworks. Both have had serious problems in the past two years because of high energy prices. In fact, both have had to close furnaces for several months at a time. Excellent chapters in the Stern report look at how we should address the needs of heavy industry. Table 11A is quite compendiousand sets out statistics for UK production sectors in123 different areas and shows that glass and bricks are 10 times more carbon intensive than the financial sector. However, I do not take the lesson from that that everybody can or should become a banker.
	The position of heavily energy intensive industries is a clear demonstration of the need for an internationally co-ordinated approach to climate change. There will be no environmental benefit if relatively efficient UK plant moves overseas where environmental standards are lower and from which transport costs are high. The Stern report suggests international trading agreements by sector, and I agree. Obviously, we do not want to impede major technological progress such as that by Thorn Lighting that I described earlier, but exporting all our heavy industry is unlikely to be the best environmental solution.
	Despite the 574 pages of the Stern report, there are further pieces of analysis that it would be helpful for us to have. The first is a comparison across the countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development of carbon intensity disaggregated by sector. Only with that can we set demanding and realistic targets. At the moment, the UK scores well overall, but that is because of the big contribution made by the City of London. However, we should not use that to have, for example, a relatively inefficient household sector.

David Gauke: It is a great pleasure to have an opportunity to speak in today's debate. In particular, I would like to address the rather topical issue of our taxation system and the relationship it has with productivity. I say that it is topical in part because of the report produced by the CBI this morning. The survey looked at business's attitude to taxation in this country. I am afraid that the picture is not a happy one. According to the survey,70 per cent. of senior business men who responded believe that the UK is a poorer international business location than it was in 2001. Some 75 per cent. say that the corporate tax regime is worse than it was in 2001 and 19 per cent. of UK companies are considering moving their headquarters abroad, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon) mentioned earlier today.
	In 2000, we had the 10th highest corporation tax rate among the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. It is now the 18th highest. However, rates—particularly corporation tax rates—are not the be all and end all of taxation. It is the habit of the Government, and of the Chancellor in particular, to quote the fact that corporation tax rates have fallen since 1997. That ignores two points. According to a recent World Bank report corporation tax constitutes, on average, only 36 per cent. of the total amount paid by businesses. These things have to be looked at relatively. There was a time, say in 1997, when our business taxation rates were lower than the OECD average, but that is no longer the case, because our competitors are cutting taxes whereas we are going in the other direction. That is why we are rapidly approaching the point where the tax burden in this country will be greater than that in Germany. That puts us at a competitive disadvantage, at least compared with where we were only a few years ago.
	As I mentioned earlier, rates are only one aspect of taxation; there is also tax complexity. The Government have a poor record in that area and there is nothing in the Queen's Speech as such that will address that. We wait to see whether the Finance Bill in this parliamentary Session will attempt to address it.
	Returning to the CBI survey, 95 per cent. of business people say that the tax system should be simplified. That hardly comes as a surprise. However, the external experts have been damning when it comes to the position that we face in this country. KPMG said:
	"The general trend for the UK's tax system in recent years has been towards more complexity and less certainty, which is gradually making the UK a less competitive location for industry".
	The British Chambers of Commerce said:
	"It is clear that the system has become progressively more complex over a number of years, driven by the relentless increase in tax legislation...The complexity of the tax system has a real impact on UK firms' ability to compete in an increasingly competitive market".
	The Chartered Institute of Taxation follows in a similar vein:
	"Over the past several years there has been a series of waves of complex ill thought out tax legislation that purports to counteract tax avoidance but, in practice, goes much further than that...Certainly the UK's competitive position has been undermined."
	It is always difficult to quantify complexity, but there are one or two rough and ready measures that are worth looking at. One is the length of handbooks. In 1997, Tolley's  Yellow Tax Handbook of the British tax code was 4,555 pages long; it is now 9,841. In a report published a week or so ago, the World Bank noticed that, among the major economies, only India has a longer tax code than the UK.
	Another rough and ready measure is Finance Acts. I say this with some feeling having served on the Committee on the previous Finance Bill —[Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."] I am grateful for those comments, which I hope will be recorded in  Hansard. One hears stories from the old hands about how they stayed up all night considering Finance Bills in the 1980s. Those Finance Bills were only 157 pages long.

David Gauke: First, I think that the hon. Gentleman is referring to the Companies Act 1985. I am referring to Finance Acts. Secondly, the sympathy of us all goes out to those who have suffered under Farepak—I am sure that he would agree that this is not a party political point—but the Government have been in place for nine years, so if there is a fault with the legislation, which I am not necessarily saying that there is, those remarks should be directed to his own Front Bench. I was trying to make the point that Finance Bills have grown in length substantially. Between 2000 and 2005, they were 481 pages long.
	The third assessment of complexity involves looking at the World Economic Forum, which produces a rating on these matters. Looking at the UK's global competitiveness on tax complexity, in 2004-05—not that long ago—it was 48th, but within a year it had moved to 67th. Again, there is an element of too much complexity. It is worth noting that the survey undertaken by the tax reform commission, which was commissioned by my hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor, showed that 60 per cent. of businesses are increasing spending on tax planning at the moment. Some 78 per cent. said that the level of tax complexity has increased in the past five years.
	There is a further issue with complexity. There are obviously the compliance costs and so on. The major concern is unpredictability and instability. When we look at the developing world and think about how it can develop further, most people consider issues such as property rights, certainty within the taxation system and so on. We do not face anything like the problems that exist in some developing world countries, but the economic point remains the same. It is bad for an economy to have an arbitrary, unpredictable taxation system. Business needs confidence to invest and the taxation system can undermine that confidence.
	Various elements make up the concerns with regard to unpredictability. First, there is the extent of the changes, to which I referred earlier. When we have large Finance Bills and there are substantial changes to taxation, year on year, that causes concern. There is also concern about the sheer level of complexity. It is difficult for businesses, even when advised by highly skilled advisers, to know what their tax liabilities are.
	There is also a concern about extra powers for Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. I am thinking in particular of a recent consultation document about additional powers. PricewaterhouseCoopers, for example, has made representations to the Treasury to say that it recognises the advantages of harmonising and modernising the powers of HMRC. However, it says that while harmonisation and modernisation are one thing,
	"taking the most extreme of the powers of the two former Departments"—
	by which it means the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise—
	"to create a set of powers that are far more extensive than either of the predecessor sets of powers, is something quite different and which needs to be properly justified".
	There is no doubt from the tone of the submission made by PWC that it is sceptical about that. There is also a concern—again, I can see it in documentation from PWC—about too much discretion for HMRC. It raises the concern that the Revenue was often able to manage legislation by means of such devices as frequently asked questions. That creates difficulty for business. There is no doubt that there is increasing evidence that the relationship between businesses and HMRC is deteriorating.
	I have no doubt that tax evasion must be tackled—the Government are right to try to do so—but the balance must be right. I am worried that the increased complexity that is being weighed on business is having a serious impact on it, partly due to a lack of certainty. Support for the view that businesses lack certainty in the tax system comes from today's CBI survey, which shows that 23 per cent. of the business people who responded said that the way in which their company's tax returns had been treated had declined since the creation of HMRC. Something is going wrong with the relationship between businesses and HMRC when that is happening. The Queen's Speech contained no measures to address such concerns.
	It is by no means inevitable that tax complexity should be weighed on tax complexity, although that appears to be the direction in which we are going. We should consider examples from overseas, such as from the Republic of Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands, where there has been simplification. Those countries have looked at abolishing reliefs and lowering the actual rate.
	The Government could have considered procedural points and set out their conclusions in the Queen's Speech. The tax reform commission that my party set up examined ways in which there could be pre-Budget consultation on tax measures. It also considered the establishment of an office of tax simplification and the possibility of Finance Bills being examined by a Joint Committee to make use of some of the expertise of the House of Lords. I do not particularly advocate the last proposal because it would give rise to constitutional concerns, but we should use greater expertise to try to tackle the situation, because complexity and uncertainty are creating a great deal of worries.
	I have mentioned before, including during the consideration of last Session's Finance Bill, the impact on our tax law of decisions taken by the European Union and, specifically, the judgments of the European Court of Justice. Last week, the ECJ pulled back on excise duties. There was a great deal of publicity about the rate of excise duty that should be charged when a person from the UK ordered alcohol or cigarettes from Latvia using the internet. Against the advice of the advocates-general, the ECJ concluded that the UK rate should apply in that case. Despite the easy temptation to make remarks about cheap booze in the run-up to Christmas, I was greatly relieved that such a judgment was reached.
	Concerns have arisen about occasions on which the ECJ has waded into areas in such a way as to attack the whole integrity of the UK taxation system, especially with regard to the way in which corporation tax group relief has worked. In many respects, the ECJ is more a political body than a judicial body. Many of its judgments seem to reflect its ultimate political objective of ever closer union, as is seen from its decisions on taxation and other matters. The ECJ is also political in that it seems to have an awareness of the political pressures in member states and thus treads carefully at times—perhaps last week's decision on excise duties was an example of that.
	I am worried that there is a two-stage process. The ECJ makes it difficult for any member state to raise revenue in the way in which it would like. It is not a huge jump to go from that on to the next step of suggesting that that could be dealt with through greater harmonisation and a common tax base, as I believe Mr. László Kovács will propose at a meeting of Finance Ministers tomorrow. I am worried that the integrity of the system is being attacked at the first level and that the solution produced at the second level is essentially one of European Union tax law. That would be wrong for a number of reasons. It would further weaken any competitive advantage that we have in the UK and it would take taxation out of the democratic forum in such a way that our electorate would no longer have a say.
	I know that the Financial Secretary has heard me make similar speeches before, but I say again that I am worried that the ECJ is, to some extent, a political body so that I can increase political awareness of my concerns. I hope that the House will send out the message that it does not like our taxation system being attacked by judgments of the European Court of Justice, and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to make that point again.
	Productivity is a hugely important issue in this country. We need to address the situation because recent years' productivity growth figures have not been good. The taxation system is one element of the problem, because the competitive advantages that this country built up throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s have gradually been diminished. There is no doubt that economic policies have an effect for a long time after they have been implemented. When the Chancellor was boasting about unemployment figures to my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone), I was struck that he resorted to saying that his achievements on unemployment tended to have taken place between May and October 1997. I cannot help thinking that the previous Government might have had something to do with that success, although I hope that I am not making a claim that is too hard to back up.
	Many economic decisions have long-lasting effects, although they are not always immediate. Long-term harm is being done to our country through our business tax system and we are no longer as competitive as we were. If we do not address the situation in this Session or soon, we will face problems.

Ian Austin: It is a great pleasure to speak in the debate and a particular pleasure to follow the speech made by the hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke). We heard, as usual, a thoughtful and detailed contribution from someone for whom I have developed a great deal of respect since we were elected last year. I want to focus on three matters: the second paragraph of the Queen's Speech, which paid tribute to the stability that the Government's management of the economy has delivered; a coupleof the Bills cited in the Queen's Speech; and several of the points made by the shadow Chancellor and his colleagues.
	First, on the stability of the economy, the macro-economic framework introduced by the Government has delivered growth of 26 per cent. in the nine years since 1997, compared with 15 per cent. in the nine years before 1997. Historically low mortgage rates have cut costs for the average homeowner by about £4,000 a year. Employment is at a record rate of 29 million, which is up 2.5 million since 1997. More people in my constituency are in work than at any point in our history.
	Despite those dramatic improvements, one can still see the legacy of the industrial and economic restructuring of the early 1980s, when the industries on which the black country's prosperity had been based experienced decline. When I left school in the early 1980s, Dudley had high unemployment and some 3,300 young people had been out of work for more than six months. Today, the equivalent figure is just a few hundred, although I want all young people to be in work or training. More than 1,000 youngsters are better off through the new deal.
	As we consider the next stage of our area's economic development, I am pleased that the Queen's Speech showed that we will maintain our focus on training, because skills are a crucial component of a dynamic economy. We must ensure that young people have the skills that they and the labour market need; that is particularly important for an area such as Dudley because it is the only way that those without work will be able to share in this country's prosperity. It is also, crucially, the only way my area will be able to attract the high-wage, high-skill jobs of the future.
	Secondly, having been one of those MPs who called on the Government to introduce a climate change Bill in the Queen's Speech, I am pleased that such a Bill was announced. Climate change is not only the biggest long-term threat that we face, but a great economic opportunity for areas such as mine. We need to look at how we can help manufacturers of the new green technologies—solar panels, energy-efficient boilers and wind turbines—to locate in former manufacturing areas such as the one that I represent.
	Thirdly, I want to welcome the proposals in the Queen's Speech to enable more people to move off benefit and give them the support that they need to return to work. Last week, the Opposition discussed how to deal with the problem of the poorest 10 per cent. in society. It was the latest in a long series of eye-catching initiatives to show how much the Opposition have changed. I disagree with those who say that the Opposition do not believe in anything or that they have no policies.On the contrary, it is precisely because of what they believe, because of their values, that their policies cannot work.
	Let us take last week's announcement. In his very first interview following the announcement the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Ruffley), the spokesman on welfare reform, said that the solution was not "jacking up benefits" but
	"more active civil citizenship and social enterprise."
	I am as big a supporter of the voluntary sector and the social enterprise movement as anyone, and I recognise the much bigger role that they can play alongside an empowering and enabling public sector. But earlier today the shadow Chancellor attacked the Government's record on child poverty. We have tough targets to cut child poverty, but he says that they are just an aspiration, and the Opposition fought us every step of the way on those targets. They say that tax credits are a waste of money and that child support should be cut. That is because, whatever they say about the responsibility that we all have to act together collectively as a community, they will not, as a matter of ideology, do what is necessary to deliver social justice and open up opportunity to all. That is why they say that they want to tackle poverty but condemn the increases in public spending needed to tackle it as "fiscal irresponsibility".
	As we heard earlier, the Conservatives have announced the so-called proceeds of growth rule, which, whatever they say, commits them to cutting public spending year in, year out. The right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) complained earlier that we had not spent enough on transport infrastructure, but the Leader of the Opposition himself admitted that their policy is to spend less. He said:
	"As that money comes in let's share that between additional public spending and reductions in taxes. That is a dramatic difference. It would be dramatically different after five years of a Conservative Government."
	If that rule were in place now, spending would be£17 billion lower than the Government's plans set out in the Queen's Speech, and lower still in future.
	The Conservatives' tax report, which was also mentioned earlier, was commissioned by the shadow Chancellor and described by him as the frameworkfor policy. Its authors went further and called for£21 billion of unfunded tax cuts. Those, if implemented, would undermine the stability of the economy mentioned in the Queen's Speech and repeat the mistakes of the past. It is impossible to argue that savings could be made on that scale without hitting hard-working low and middle income families by cutting deep into tax credits and the new deal. Perhaps that is why the Leader of the Opposition said that he wanted to replace public services for the poor with
	"a profound increase in voluntary and community support."
	It is the same old ideology of a small state and spending cuts, leaving the vulnerable relying on charity.

Andrew Selous: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that to fully tackle poverty it is necessary to work seriously against the causes of poverty in addition to providing the support of the benefits system?

Ian Austin: My hon. Friend gives an eloquent description of the poverty that his constituents and those in the rest of the country had to endure during18 years of Conservative Government, which, whatever they say about poverty today, is never condemned by Opposition Members.

Michael Gove: I am inordinately grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I am a great admirer of him and of his intellect, and it seems a pity that it has been bent this evening to entirely partisan ends. Can he give me the benefit of that intellect now? Why, underthis Government, has the number of people who are at 40 per cent. of median income or less increased? Why are the very poorest in our society more numerous after ten years of the Labour Government?

Michael Weir: I had intended to concentrate on the work and pensions aspects of the Queen's Speech but, before doing so, I would like to make a few comments on the economic aspects.
	I noted that the Chancellor mentioned a cost of£5 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and he repeated, in a slightly different form, the assurance made by the Prime Minister some weeks ago that troops in the field would get whatever equipment they required. The problem is that troops from my constituency, from 45 Commando, are currently operating in Afghanistan and there have been reports that they are not getting all the equipment they require. There is a disconnect between what is being said in this country and what is happening on the ground. Whatever we may feel about individual operations, we would all agree that troops fighting those operations should get the equipment they need. The Government need to look seriously at this and make sure that these troops and others get the equipment they require.
	On climate change, I was interested in what the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) said and agreed with much of it. Like the hon. Member for Dudley, North (Mr. Austin), I took part in the campaign ably organised by Friends of the Earth for a climate change Bill in the Queen's Speech. I, too, was pleased to see that such a Bill was included, although one got the impression that it was stuck in at the last minute because of the huge build-up of support for it. It has not been particularly well thought out; indeed we have yet to see the detail of the Bill. The only thing that the Prime Minister has said so far about it is that there will not be annual targets because they are not practical. I disagree; it is important that we look at annual targets because they give a measure of how we are progressing on climate change.
	It is not beyond the wit of parliamentary draftsmen to build in a fail-safe mechanism for unforeseen circumstances, which we all accept can occur in any one year, that balances them out overall.
	The most depressing thing about the debate on the proposed Bill is that it seems to have centred so far entirely on the question of taxation: what will be taxed, how it will be taxed and who will be taxed more. Tackling climate change must go much wider than that; it must encompass all areas of Government. If we get bogged down in arguments about taxation only, the people out there who are very concerned about climate change and want to do their bit will be turned off. There are very difficult issues, but we must look at other ways of tackling climate change, and not just through taxation.
	For example, there are many ways we can look at how government works. In many areas of rural Scotland—I am sure that the same applies in rural England—services have been centralised, which means that people have to travel much more and emissions increase. This has gone on for some years in hospitals, schools and other areas. If the Government are serious about tackling climate change, we must look at reversing that process and making sure that services are near the people who wish to use them, which will reduce the amount of carbon that is required.

Michael Weir: I entirely agree. I was not making the case that there should be no tax incentives, but the debate must go wider than tax. Coke sequestration is a good example. Mitsui Babcock, or Doosan Babcock as it is about to be, which is based in Renfrew, is a world leader in this field and has been putting the machinery into Chinese coal plants. Many of the new plants in China, despite what we are told, are sequestrating carbon and making a real attempt to try to come to terms with some of the climate change agenda. We need to think outside the box; all areas of Government need to think about how we tackle climate change.
	Interesting figures were released over the summer that showed that in many rural areas the carbon footprint was higher than in urban areas. The probable reason for that is that in rural areas we rely on motor cars much more because there is no alternative. We need to look at that—we cannot have a one-size-fits-all tax on motor cars and fuel—and the impact on different areas. There have to be trade-offs.
	When we talk about air miles, we must take certain things into account. Many of us are keen on fair trade goods, but many such goods travel a great distanceto get to our shops. We must balance the carbon emissions of the producers of those goods against the carbon emissions of getting the goods to the markets. Serious issues need to be examined, and we need to consider rebalancing all that, rather than looking only at taxes.
	Energy is a huge issue in Scotland. I have talked on many occasions in this House about the need to examine transmission charges. Under the scheme generated by Ofgem—no pun intended—transmission charges on wind farms in the north of Scotland are much greater than any that would result from a generation facility being built in the south of England. That means that there is a disincentive for many renewable energy developments, not only wind farms but tidal facilities and, possibly, some of the coal plants, depending on where they are built. We must examine that, and how to have an energy system that delivers to our towns and cities while taking advantage of renewables. That matter should also come under the climate change Bill. I am not a supporter of nuclear power, and I do not see it as an answer. There are things that we can do on transmission charges that will begin to answer the energy equation.
	I move on to the work and pensions aspect of the Queen's Speech, particularly the Child Support Agency. If I heard the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Mr. Kennedy) correctly, he said that the Treasury regarded it as a cash cow when it was introduced. That seems to have been a serious miscalculation, as it has become a cash drain on the Treasury since.
	There is no doubt that root-and-branch reform of the CSA is necessary and that the proposals in the Queen's Speech are very welcome. All hon. Members will have filing cabinets full of cases relating to the CSA and will have torn their hair out trying to get solutions to seemingly intractable problems. The proposals on the CSA so far raise as many questions as they answer, because there is a lack of detail about what will take the CSA's place and how the transfer to the new system will be handled. I raise the point because I am fearful that if we do not get the detail right, we will just put another serious problem in place of the one that we have. We need to get this right. People have suffered from the CSA for many years, and we must put something in its place that works and delivers as it is supposed to.
	One of the proposals is to allow parties to enter into voluntary agreements, which is welcome as it would remove some of the contentious roadblocks to progress, but it is vital that the system for dealing with such agreements is robust and fair. I have raised this point several times with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions during questions and have still to get answers about how this will work.
	Before the CSA's creation, there was a system in Scotland, at least, where parties could negotiate an agreement through their respective solicitors. It could then be registered on the books of council and session and would thereafter have the same force as a court decree. That was important because it allowed many issues to be sorted out in a reasonable and amicable way, but this ceased to be possible after the CSA's introduction. I invite the Ministers responsible to tell us whether it is envisaged that a new agreement will act in the same way.
	I know that many Ministers seem to have a downer on lawyers. I should declare an interest as a non-practising solicitor and member of the Law Society of Scotland, but the reason it was important to have solicitors' involvement was to ensure that each party received proper legal advice on their rights. It is not absolutely necessary for such advice to be given by solicitors in any new system, but it is essential that such agreements are entered into only after each party has had the opportunity to be fully advised on their rights; otherwise it could become a minefield and as bad as the existing system. Is the legislation intended to allow for a system whereby advice must be given prior to entering into the agreement?
	The next problem relates to a question that will inevitably arise, and which has plagued the CSA: what happens when there is a significant change in the circumstances of one of the parties to an agreement?It is essential that there is a process to allow a renegotiation or amendment to the agreement in those circumstances, just as there was, at least theoretically, in child support cases. I would be interested to know the Minister's thinking on this point. Does he envisage that there should be matters that come before a court, some sort of extra-judicial system or the replacement of the agency? Such matters might be technical, but they are important.
	I have previously raised the enforceability of such agreements with the Secretary of State and have yet to receive an answer, so I shall try again to get one by asking the Minister to address the question whether these agreements will be enforceable in the same manner as a court decree or decision of the CSA. This is an important point because inevitably some parties will not live up to the terms of an agreement that they have entered into.
	The second problem on enforceability relatesto cross-border enforceability. I have encountered problems in some cases because child support has not been pursued because a party due to make payment has left the country. Even in cases where there is a treaty allowing the enforcement of decrees, it would seem that it has not been possible to enforce some child support orders. I urge the Minister, as I have previously urged the Secretary of State, to examine whether these agreements could have the same validity as a court order and be enforced in the same manner.

Michael Weir: I have taken a lot of interventions.
	A citizen's pension would ensure that all our pensioners are lifted out of poverty and have a decent basic pension on which to build. It would tackle the problem of disincentive under the current pension credit system. It could be made affordable by utilising the amounts currently paid in basic state pension and pension credit and by reforming the system of tax relief on private pensions. There is no evidence that the current system of pension tax relief encourages private savings; indeed, it costs a fortune as it is massively geared to the better off. Turner pointed out that it costs about £12 billion, with another £8 billion in national insurance relief. That is a massive subsidy to private pensions instead of using taxpayers' money to provide a proper state pension. Worse still, more than half of the total cost of tax relief on private pension contributions is received by the richest 10 per cent. of the population.
	It is high time that the tax relief system was reformed to become much more progressive and transparent and, in particular, to encourage low and moderate income earners to save for retirement and reward those who do so. Instead of doing that, the Government seem intent on raising the state retirement age, which will have a disproportionate impact on the poor and in areas where people have lower life expectancy. For example, a man in Glasgow has a life expectancy of 69.3 years, compared with more than 80 for a man in Kensington. Clearly, the Glasgow man will seriously lose out if the pension age is increased. To be fair, Lord Turner recognised the problem and suggested that it should remain at 65, but the Government rejected that in their response, which said that they would consider it nearer the relevant time. The evidence on life expectancy already exists, and one has to ask what they think is the relevant time given that they have already decided to raise the retirement age.

Jim Devine: The hon. Gentleman is a staunch supporter of the Union, but he seems to be arguing for Northern Ireland to have a different taxation policy that is more akin to that in the Republic? Is that correct?

Sammy Wilson: Although, as I have said, the current administration has many advantages, unfortunately waiting lists to see a doctor in Northern Ireland are much longer than those in any other part of the United Kingdom. That forces many people to seek private care rather than waiting for treatment from the national health service.
	I am concerned about Northern Ireland's huge infrastructure deficit, which—as was pointed out earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, East (Mr. Robinson)—is a legacy of years of the troubles. As a result of the IRA bombing campaign, resources were diverted to either security provision or compensation to undo the damage done by terrorists. It is significant that the very people who caused that damage are those who now complain most about the effects it has had on the Northern Ireland economy.
	I am particularly interested in some of the proposals in the Queen's Speech. First, there are the proposed changes in the planning system. I believe that one of the factors that have had an impact on economic growth in Northern Ireland is the slowness of that system. The simplest planning application takes an average of six months to go through the system; in some council areas it takes a year, and a major application can take up to two or three years. When Tesco began to come to Northern Ireland after the ceasefires, it described its experience of the system as "like wading through treacle", because the process of obtaining planning permission was so difficult and slow. I shall be interested to see what measures will be introduced to improve the planning system in that part of the United Kingdom, and I hope that some of them will be mirrored in our own economy.
	Secondly, there is the proposed reform of welfare. I welcome the Government's earlier legislation, especially the measures to take people off incapacity benefit and put them into work. I think it important for us to give people opportunities to contribute to society. Let me say in deference to some of the Members sitting on my right that when it comes to welfare I am of the Churchill rather than the Polly Toynbee school. I believe in safety nets, not in cosy blankets, and I think it important for welfare reform to be part of the restructuring of the economy.
	Thirdly, I am very interested in the legislation on serious and organised crime. As the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee has pointed out, organised crime is a massive drain on the economy in Northern Ireland. It deters investment, undermines existing industries and, of course, is used to swell the coffers of terrorist organisations. Although much work has been done, the proceeds of organised crime are still very difficult to seize. We must find a way of conveying the message that crime does not pay.
	We hope that many of the measures that will have an impact on economic growth in Northern Ireland will find their way to a devolved Assembly. Indeed, part of what the Queen's Speech promised for Northern Ireland has already been delivered. We may not approve of the way in which that Bill completed its passage last week, the rapidity of its progress or the lack of scrutiny, but we believe that it will make any future devolved Assembly a safer Assembly, with safeguards that were not in the Belfast agreement and are likely to make the Assembly more stable. Now it is up to Sinn Fein to deliver on the other side, and give a commitment to supporting the police and law and order.
	We hope that, having provided the legislative framework within which we believe devolved government can work, this Government will put pressure on those who wish to be part of government in Northern Ireland to support the police and create the right conditions for confidence and stability in any devolved Administration. However, regardless of what might be done and what powers might be vested in Northern Ireland, the huge macro-economic decisions that will affect our economy will be made in this place. One of my reasons for wanting to speak tonight was my belief that it is important for the right economic policies to be established nationally, because they have an impact on the regions of the United Kingdom—an impact that is sometimes exaggerated and magnified.
	I believe that the Government have got some things right and some things wrong. For those that they have got right, we will praise and support them; for those that they have got wrong, we will oppose and condemn them.

David Anderson: I apologise for my absence earlier. I had to attend an all-party parliamentary group meeting.
	The hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) seems to want us to have collective amnesia. Unfortunately for him, while he was at Eton some of us were in the real world, dealing with the impact of a low-tax economy and the reality of the social policy led by his leader's former employer, who really did believe that unemployment was a price worth paying. Who paid it? Not him or his ilk. It was paid not by the elite in this country, but by the poor, the old, the weak and the vulnerable, and the millions who were forced on to the dole. It was paid by the families of men and women who were left devastated by the so-called modernisation of British society, and by the towns and villages up and down the country that had the heart pulled out of them.
	In 1986, as a member of the National Union of Mineworkers, I attended the National Coal Board review hearing with my hon. Friends the Members for Easington (John Cummings) and for Sunderland, North (Bill Etherington). Few other people bothered to attend. In 1986, unemployment was at 18.2 per cent. in the region where we lived. It was said that
	"Councillor Cummings gave a graphic and depressing picture of the damage to the social fabric caused by job losses in the mining industry when added to the existing picture of unemployment caused by a far more widespread decline in local manufacturing industry and services. The general scene was one of a decline in population, of the district being left with an ageing population many of whom were chronically sick, and of a general lack of resources."
	At the time, the National Coal Board said, "It is not for us to decide."
	"It was for the Government and Parliament to decide what action might be necessary to alleviate the social consequences inherent"
	in the closure under discussion. The gentleman heading the review team said:
	"the economic and social factors, though disturbing, can carry little weight."
	There can be no discussion of poverty and deprivation in this country without mention of the word "Easington". My hon. Friend the Member for Easington was chair of Easington council, and what he said in 1986 came true. It came true because people did not listen to the words that he and other people spoke.
	Who else lost out because unemployment was a price worth paying? The young kids who had to resort to the youth training scheme and the youth opportunities programme; elderly people forced out of care by public service budget cuts, and those who could not get care in the first place; young people who turned to crime and drugs as a way of life instead of following their parents into the world of work; the skilled men who could not get work and were told to curl up in the corner and go away. I am also thinking of people like my friend Keith Lamb, a skilled mechanic for 26 years who spent three years on the dole from 1992 and then got a job making cardboard boxes for £82 a week; the children taught in leaking classrooms in classes with too many pupils by teachers who were ground down by the lack of opportunity of the pupils in their charge; the dedicated ancillary workers in our public services—the porters, the cleaners, the school-meals workers—who were either forced out of their jobs by compulsory competitive tendering or forced into a future of reduced wages, fewer holidays and disgraceful sick pay schemes and were told that they were no longer part of the NHS team; and the public sector professionals trying to hold together our health and social services while expending their skills and time in constant budget cutting, reorganisations and redundancy negotiations, watching a lifetime of work disappearing before their eyes.
	Those people are not figments of my imagination, and such job cuts are not imaginary. They are real people. I am talking about the simple statistics of the nightmare of that time: 3 million people on the dole and one in four people living in poverty, and generational unemployment having become a way of life. They are real people: people I lived with, grew up with, worked with and played with. They are the people I represented as a trade union activist, the people who came before me as a member of the social security appeal tribunal and the people I looked after as a care worker in social services. They are the people who paid the price for the arrogance, the short-termism and the lack of concern and care of a political ideology that did not believe in responsibility and the concepts of society or community.
	It was for those reasons that not only people from my background but the people of this country rejected the Conservative party. Its current position is riddled with inconsistencies and fake promises rather than real policy, and people know that it is not possible to have good social policy at the same time as massive cuts are being made in public services. I do not know whether the sums for that are £17 billion, £21 billion,£40 billion, £50 billion or more, but I do know that if the Conservatives do that they will not find it possible to protect and defend public services, and the most vulnerable people in our society who rely on them. No matter how hard they flip-flop and how hard they pretend that they care, people will not be conned by them again.

David Anderson: I was going to say that I could not agree more, but I could have agreed more if my hon. Friend had been allowed to speak for a bit longer. The benefits that have come from this House and have been shared across the United Kingdom are obviously positives. The hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) mentioned that he had seen real improvements on the ground in his part of the country, and it is clear that those north of the border have also seen such improvements. Their experience is similar to that of the people where I come from: we have removed the scourge of youth unemployment; we have built extra support for working families and their children; we have lifted thousands of children out of poverty; and we are rebuilding the very fabric of society through new schools and new hospitals, and by refurbishing millions of homes.
	Let us not forget that we would not be here today without the national minimum wage and the tax credits that some Members have tried to rubbish in this House today. There have clearly been problems. But there has also been massive good news for people who have had tax credits. We need to do more, however.
	Our Government must do more. The pension reforms are key to the long-term future of this country, and they are well-timed and necessary, but they must reflect the needs of the people of this country. To that end, I urge the Secretary of State to look at the issue of raising the retirement age in the knowledge that not all people have shared in the increase in longevity that there has been in this country. Manual workers still die much earlier in this country than do professional workers, and the factors linked to that should be considered. Likewise, raising the school leaving age may reduce the time that people spend in work, but let us not pretend that hard work did not kill anybody. Look at the facts. When the retirement age for miners was reduced in the 1980s from 65 to 62, their average life expectancy was 65 years and two days. It is no wonder that the mineworkers' pension scheme was so well financed—there was nobody alive to take money out of it.
	In the effort to build up security in retirement for tomorrow's pensioners, I urge the Secretary of State to work with the representatives of today's pensioners in order to address their real needs now. I understand his reluctance to concede the demands of the National Pensioners Convention, which has called for him to raise the basic state pension to the level of the minimum income guaranteed for all. I also understand his reluctance to reinstate the link with earnings, and I appreciate the problems associated with paying a full pension to all citizens in order to deal with the unjust treatment of women in retirement. However, he has to accept that the NPC and other representative groups, including Age Concern, are genuinely concerned about the real-life experiences of the older people of today.
	In particular, I hope that the Secretary of State will address the case put forward by the NPC that the national insurance fund is massively over-funded, standing at £22 billion above its recommended "safe cash flow balance" level. It is clear that a fund that was set up and paid for by yesterday's workers is now being withheld from them in their present position as today's pensioners. A provision reinstating the link between pensions and earnings should be included in the pension reform Bill and not left to chance or the fate of the market. Using the national insurance fund for this purpose would remove that uncertainty. What cannot be denied is the legitimacy of the concerns expressed by pensioners' organisations. I urge my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to hold a genuine consultation with them during the Bill's passage.
	In the shorter term, I return to the point that I made during today's Question Time—the real impact on older people of the energy price increases that have occurred in the past three years. This is a real-time issue. National Energy Action believes that today,2.8 million people face real fuel poverty. The Government's statistics are based on a figure of1.2 million people, but that goes back almost two years. I urge the Secretary of State to address this issue. If he cannot do so in the short term, will he at least consider building in to next year's state pension a heating upgrade to cover the shortfall?
	In calling for that, I have come full circle. Our lack of control over the utility companies and the price hikes are a direct result of the policies adopted by the Conservatives in their orgy of self-indulgence as they sold off our national assets. Nobody told Sid while he was buying his cut-price shares that he would end up paying through the nose for gas and electricity, or that water prices would quadruple as pipes leaked and drought orders and hose-pipe bans became the norm. Sadly for the Conservatives, some of us will never suffer from political amnesia. We will neither forget nor forgive the waste that they laid across this country, and this country will not turn to them while their policy is based on rogue promises and economic nonsense.

Philip Dunne: It is a great pleasure to contribute to the debate and to follow the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr. Anderson), who gave us an impassioned history lesson on the politics of20 years ago. As I was not a Member of the House in those days, I found it quite refreshing to imagine what life must have been like in the Thatcher years.
	Let us turn to the real subject of this debate, which is not what happened in 1986 but what is happening in 2006. I have to say that I was disappointed by the Chancellor's contribution, as I am sure many Members in all parts of the House were. I was anticipating that, in his farewell appearance at a Queen's Speech debate in the role of Chancellor, he might put on a magisterial display and range across the successes under his chancellorship. Instead, we had a policy-lite speech that consisted primarily of attacks on Conservative Back Benchers. When we look at  Hansard tomorrow, we will see that he spent more time criticising members of the No Turning Back group than he did on Labour party policy. That may have had something to do with the fact that he threw away most of his speech on Labour policy because he was so enraged by the reaction of Opposition Members. That is not a particularly encouraging sign of what we can look forward to should he become Prime Minister shortly.
	I shall talk about what the Chancellor did not want to talk about—his legacy—and the need for sound public finance. We hear often from the Chancellor about his successes, but he chooses to gloss over those elements of the economy that have been less successful. I shall focus on a couple of those elements tonight.
	In 1997, we had had five years of rising GDP and, as a Labour Member who spoke earlier seemed conveniently to forget, that growth rose at a higher rate in the last five years of the Conservative Government than it has on average in the nearly 10 years of the Labour Government. They do not like to be reminded of that.

Brooks Newmark: In fact, through clever devices, the Chancellor has been using off-balance sheet financing, which has increased so that today it is almost£1 trillion, compared with the £486 billion of on-balance sheet borrowing.

Philip Dunne: I have been very generous in giving way to the hon. Gentleman, but I must make progress.
	There are several other aspects of off-balance sheet debt. Hon. Members have talked about the Child Support Agency, which has run up an astonishing£3.5 billion in outstanding maintenance payments. I accept that that figure is not the Government's obligation, but the obligation of absent parents. The Government are due to collect that money, but are failing to do so. The agency calculates that almost£2 billion of that £3.5 billion is uncollectible, and in recent reports in  The Times, it is anticipated that the Government will recognise that they have made a mess of managing that debt accumulation. They are unable to write off those debts using their own computer systems and will have to legislate to do so.
	The third liability with which the Government are saddling us is on the whole issue of public sector pensions. There has been some reference to pensions in the debate, but not enough, and very little reference has been made to public sector pensions. I welcome the proposals stemming from the Turner report. We have had many discussions about pensions in the Chamber, and we will continue to discuss the subject when the pensions Bill comes before the House, but at this point, it seems that no attempt will be made in the Bill to try to address public sector pension liabilities, which have mushroomed in recent years.
	A detailed research report put together by the Institute of Economic Affairs calculates that public sector pension liabilities have exceeded £1 trillion. An accurate calculation, such as those made by actuaries, would recognise the Government's cost of borrowing. The Government use a discount rate, based on the rate that would apply to a double-A corporation that was borrowing to fund its liabilities. Of course, the Government are triple-A rated, and can borrow much more cheaply than that. That simply understates the scale of the liability, presumably for political reasons. In the pensions Bill, there has been no attempt to recognise that the public sector needs to bear its share of the challenges that we will face in dealing with demographic change in coming generations.
	It is not only Opposition Members who have raised that concern. Many outside commentators have castigated the Government for dropping the ball as a result of the deal done in Warwick before the last election. To name just one, David Frost, the director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce, has said:
	"The huge cost of public-sector pensions is one of the biggest issues facing this country and the government is doing nothing to address it. It is totally unfair that the burden of pension reform is being left to the private sector."
	I agree with that.
	I turn from the Government to the subject of the personal debt legacy. Earlier this evening, it was mentioned that personal debt in the UK has risen rapidly, by more than £100 billion, or 10.2 per cent., in the past 12 months. It totalled £1.258 trillion at the end of September this year, and it has more than tripled since 1993. That accounts for a large part of our economic growth, which has been spurred by consumer spending over the past few years. The legacy of the Chancellor that concerns me is the problems that will be posed for people who have run up substantial debts that they are unable to pay and the impact on the economy of that debt bubble bursting—something almost too frightening to contemplate.
	Companies are making good business from encouraging people to enter into individual voluntary agreements; in other words, taking a short cut to declaring themselves bankrupt. Rates of personal bankruptcy are at a historical high—not something from which any Chancellor should take great comfort.
	The Chancellor touched only fleetingly on another aspect of his legacy—the growing increase in unemployment in the UK, on which he puts a somewhat different spin. We have had 18 months of trend increase in unemployment, which is running at 5.6 per cent. across the country as a whole. That is of concern to all of us, but of particular concern to me is the fact that unemployment appears to be rising much more rapidly in some rural areas that have historically relied on basic manufacturing. My hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard), in a characteristically impassioned intervention on the Chancellor, pointed out that over the past 12 months unemployment in Shropshire has risen by an astonishing 36 per cent. In my constituency, much of that unemployment has been in the aluminium capital of England—Bridgnorth—where we have lost 200 manufacturing jobs in the past six months alone.
	The consequence of the Chancellor's legacy is that corporate Britain feels that it is under much more pressure than he seems to believe. My hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor referred to the CBI survey published this morning, which makes a timely contribution to our debate. Three quarters of the people surveyed believe that the corporate tax regime is worse than it was in 2001. The Chancellor rather disparagingly said that the survey was based on responses from only 89 companies. However, if he had taken the trouble to read it he would have found that it was based on the FTSE 350 companies, so 89 responses represent about 25 per cent., which is a high response rate from any type of corporate survey and indicates the concern among most of the largest companies in the land that took the trouble to respond.
	Areas of concern relate to over-taxation and over-regulation and to the fact that both may encourage businesses to move away from this country. The headline tax rate for corporate Britain, at 30 per cent., is about five percentage points ahead of the European Union, which is significantly higher than the rate in Ireland, as we heard earlier. The tax burden on companies has increased as a whole, and the proportion from direct taxation is more than 20 per cent., compared to about 19 per cent. 20 years ago. The increase is significant and explains the concerns. Although the headline corporate tax rate has gone down, the overall proportion of tax contributed by corporate Britain to the Treasury has gone up considerably.
	In an intervention earlier, I referred to a report, published last month, by KPMG for the Investment Management Association on the City's contribution to that increased taxation. The report argues that funds that in the past we would have expected to be domiciled in the UK are increasingly being domiciled outside this country to avoid the taxes levied on the financial services sector. As I pointed out earlier, over the past 10 years twice as many funds have been attracted to set up in Ireland and 10 times as many in Luxembourg as in the UK. The conclusion of the report is that
	"the UK's tax system is to blame".
	The other concern that emerges from these reports is that if we continue with an over-regulated and over-taxed corporate environment, we will increasingly lose many of our corporates, which will domicile in more favourable climates. The Chancellor is living in the past once again. He repeated with some glee the numbers that he had quoted at Treasury questions earlier this month. He spoke about the number of companies that have located here in comparison with other European countries as if it provided a magnificent rebuttal of my point. In fact, he was talking about companies that located here over the past nine years, but we are talking about companies today that are thinking about moving overseas. It is apples and pears. We are not interested in what has happened over the past nine years, but concerned about what is happening now and what is at stake in Britain today.
	In that regard, the comments of Mr. Chris Spooner, the head of financial planning and tax at HSBC—one of the largest companies currently domiciled in this country—in a speech given to the Chartered Institute of Taxation earlier this month, are revealing. He said that he was no longer happy with the tax situation in Britain:
	"The UK used to be a good place for tax reasons. I am not sure that this is the case any more. We take the competitive environment very seriously and there are others like us".
	The Government and the Chancellor should not take that threat lightly.
	I should like to make two final points before closing. One relates to the centrepiece of the Queen's Speech and last year's Budget: the focus on education and the importance of increasing standards to maintain our economic competitiveness. There has been a series of studies attempting to understand why this country's science community is under such pressure. I met someone at the weekend who is the managing director of a substantial software IT company. He told me that he attended a conference the other day at which he found out that there are 3,000 physics PhDs in India, which is more than all the PhDs in the whole of Europe. Last year, the number of students taking physics A-level in this country was down 24 per cent. on the number in 1994. The number of chemistry students taking A-level is also down, though not by quite so much— [Interruption.] It was up in one year, but is down significantly over the period since 1994. In fact, since I am being challenged on the number, it is down 8 per cent. since the Government came to power in 1997. There is a very serious risk that we will not generate the students we need today to become the business leaders of tomorrow.

Peter Bone: I am afraid that I will not give way, because other hon. Members wish to take part in the debate.
	The letter continues:
	"I am sure you will not be surprised that we believe we cannot deliver both financial and non-financial targets in 2005/06.
	It will be a simple and inevitable consequence of a growing gap between our allocated funding and the monies we need (as defined by the national formula) to meet the needs of our population."
	That was Sir Richard Tilt's view in August 2005.
	The crux of the matter is that the Government spend a lot of time, money and effort working out what is a fair level of funding for each PCT based on its needs compared to similar areas across the country. That has been developed so that we have a level playing field across the national health service. As the Secretary of State for Health said in a letter to me and my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone) on 25 August 2005:
	"A weighted capitation formula is used to determine each PCT's target share of available resources, to enable them to commission similar levels of health service for populations in similar need."
	I agree entirely with the Secretary of State. That is exactly what should happen in our NHS, but it is not happening in north Northamptonshire and, year after year, we are underfunded. There is no end in sight to this underfunding. In a letter to me, the Secretary of State said:
	"Northamptonshire Heartlands PCT will be 3.5 per cent. under target by 2007/8."
	While the gap between what we should get and what we actually get is being closed, we will still not receive what the Government say is our fair and equitable funding. In fact, north Northamptonshire will still be £13.2 million short of its fair share. This lack of funding by the Government is causing the crisis in Wellingborough and the surrounding areas.
	Let us look at the figures a little more closely and at the funding for north Northamptonshire compared to the national average while bearing in mind that we should be better funded than the national average because of our areas of severe deprivation. Let us just go back three years to 2003-04 when revenue allocations were directly made to primary care trusts for the first time. In 2003-04, the PCT only received90 per cent. of the funding that it should have had compared with the national average. This was a shortfall of £22.2 million. In 2004-05, we again received only 90 per cent. compared with the national average. This was a shortfall of £24.4 million. Almost unbelievably, in 2005-06, the figure fell to 89 per cent. of the national average, increasing the shortfall to £29.37 million. This year, the shortfall is £20.16 million and, next year, it is predicted to be £15.08 million. This gives a total shortfall since 2003-04 of £11,210,000.
	If we had had the funding that the Government said we should have had, there would be no crisis in our local health service. The people of Wellingborough and the surrounding areas have suffered because the Government have not implemented their own policy—a policy to bring fairness and a level playing field to what is supposed to be a national health service, not a postcode lottery health service.
	Let me list some of the cuts that Kettering general hospital has been forced to make in recent weeks and months due to the lack of funding. They include reducing nurse levels to the absolute minimum, making 2,100 patients wait a minimum of five months for their operation, delaying planned second operations such as hip replacements and removing patients from the waiting list for low-priority operations. So apparently the answer to waiting lists is not improved patient care, but is just to tell patients that they can no longer have their operations. Further cuts involve redeploying surplus staff into existing vacancies with little regard to suitability, closing a surgical ward, closing an operating theatre, reducing prescriptions on discharge from 28 to seven days, closing a further medical ward, reducing the availability of consultants, making patients wait longer for treatment in audiology, freezing vacancies, reducing maintenance funding, increasing canteen prices and making nurses pay to park at the hospital.
	There is, however, one part of Kettering hospital where the patients are not kept waiting, where operations are not delayed and where there is never a complaint about the quality of service. Several months ago, a new day care unit was built in the grounds of the hospital. It has 28 beds, four operating theatres, and a breast cancer screening centre. The unit has never had any adverse statistics recorded against it, and the reason why is that it does not have any patients, doctors or nurses. A brand new unit is sitting empty and the hospital does not know if or when it is going to be able to open it. But there is one part that is open—the typing pool that is paying all the bills to maintain a new, empty, mini-hospital.
	What my constituents need and what north Northamptonshire desperately needs is a new hospital in the Wellingborough area. A new hospital with minor accident and emergency facilities would ease the massive burden that Kettering and Northampton hospitals face each and every day.
	I have spoken about formulae; I have spoken about cuts. I now want to convey how these actually affect people in my constituency. Last week, Mrs. James and her son came to visit me at my weekly surgery. Mrs. James had written a long letter about the treatment that her husband received in Northampton general hospital. I want to read a few extracts from that letter. Mrs. James writes:
	"I repeatedly pointed out that he was not able to eat. This was in part due to him being unaware of when food and drink was available.
	"My son, Ian placed a large notice at the back of Colin's bed stating he could not see and might need help with eating and drinking. Within a short time a nurse came to see us and said the nurses did not have time to feed patients as there were only four of them and they had thirteen patients."
	I have that rather sad sign with me. Mrs. James continues:
	"Having lost approximately a third of his body weight and being severely weakened through lack of food and the dehydration tablets, his poor body could not stand against three infections.
	"He begged us to take him out and told us and at least one nurse that he felt he had been dropped into a pit and left to rot. The outcome seems to be not far from this."
	Mr. James died four hours after coming home, as a result of three infections he contracted on the ward.
	The people in my constituency and in north Northamptonshire deserve a fairer share of the national cake. I am not asking for more than our fair share, just what the Government say we should be getting, but are not. Why should my constituents suffer? This is meant to be a national health service, not a postcode lottery health service. I have two suggestions to improve health care provision in north Northamptonshire and to make it fairer for my constituents. First, I want a guarantee from the Secretary of State for Health that there will be an investigation into the provision of a new hospital in my constituency to coincide with the massive growth in population in the area. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I urge Northamptonshire PCT, and Kettering general and Northampton general hospitals to put patient care first, not Government accountants. I urge themto cease making cuts to patient care and to spend the £111 million that we should have received from the Government through their own capitation formula.The Government have said that we should have had that money for health care in north Northamptonshire. Let us use this funding for better health care provision for the people of my constituency. I challenge the PCT and the local hospitals to stand up against the Government and put the health care of patients first instead of satisfying the accountants in Whitehall. If they do that, they will have my full support.

Brooks Newmark: After seven hours of patience, I am pleased to be able to participate in the final day of the Queen's Speech debate. I hope to abide by the principle that ought to apply to both regulation and legislation: less is more. The meat, or should I say the gristle, of this year's Gracious Speech is the Statistics and Registration Service Bill. As the Treasury Committee, on which I serve, discovered in its investigation of the independence of statistics before the summer break, there are some deep misgivings about the Government's proposals. Some of those misgivings, although happily not all, are reflected in the Bill that was published last Wednesday.
	The quality of, and ease of access to, statistics forms the bedrock of administrative oversight and parliamentary scrutiny. When questioned about the structure and powers of an independent board, Lord Moser told our Committee that
	"if one needs one word, it is 'scrutiny'; it is advising the public, advising Parliament."
	We might be forgiven for thinking that the principle of economy, which ought to apply to regulation and legislation, ought not to apply to statistics, because a wealth of material is always to our benefit. However, less can be more when it comes to statistics, too. The Bill does not explicitly address the burdens associated with the collection of and access to statistical information. A study by the British Chambers of Commerce, published earlier this month and entitled "Red Tape: The Real Story", tackles exactly that issue. It contains a number of case studies drawn from real business. One of the first studies concerns the impact of Government statistics on business.
	The real problem is that the proposed Bill is introspective, which is symptomatic of what is happening across the Government. Legislation is proposed without a clear view of the effect that it will have after it has passed through its parliamentary stages and gone into force in the wide world. The Treasury wants to make a splash in the press by overhauling the treatment of statistics, which is all well and good. However, we will no doubt have something to say about the details of the proposals when the Bill is debated in the House.
	It is clear that irrelevant and inappropriate statistics are as burdensome on business and the economy as a whole as unnecessary legislation and even regulation. Chris Harrod, the chief executive of a sports equipment company, said in the British Chambers of Commerce study:
	"as a small businessman I am regularly required to fill out forms by the Office for National Statistics. Many of the forms we are asked to fill out, like the Business Register Survey and the Monthly Enquiry into Production ask for the same information."
	He said that the Government
	"should either share data across departments as a matter of course or they should look at including default information. At the moment I spend hours of my time which should be devoted to other areas of my business filling in these forms."
	The sharing of data has in itself become a minefield. Our Committee examined the problem in detail and the Government's response welcomed our recommendations on the sharing of data and the safeguards that must be in place before that can safely take place. I fear that the complex interactions among the Freedom of Information Act 2000, the Data Protection Act 1998 and the need to share administrative data will hamstring the Bill and add to the complexity faced by both the successor to the Office for National Statistics and business.
	The British Chambers of Commerce annual burdens barometer has identified the cost to business of major regulations approved since 1998 as exceeding£50 billion and climbing well into the stratosphere. Some of us would have been present earlier this year when the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) was good enough to introduce show and tell to the Chamber by unfurling the whole document and offering a line-by-line commentary of it. By happy coincidence, the subject of the first entry on the burdens barometer was the cost of the Data Protection Act, which has exceeded £6 billion since 1998. The hon. Gentleman said that the regulation
	"Could be good, or could be bad."—[ Official Report, 24 April 2006; Vol. 445, c. 414.]
	By equivocating, I assume that he meant that the intention behind the regulation might have been good, but that its implementation had been less than satisfactory.
	The operation of the Data Protection Act is the subject of a further British Chambers of Commerce case study, in which another business man says:
	"The DPA is a worthwhile piece of legislation but the process of registration is both futile for Government and time consuming for business. I do not see how registration assists government other than the revenue they take in initial notification fees and annual renewal fees."
	We have registration processes that are futile, compliance that is time consuming and, most worryingly of all, regulation being used as a revenue-raising tool, rather than a way of preventing abuses. That is the story of red tape. Such things are the hallmarks of the Chancellor's marriage to stealthy taxation and unwieldy bureaucracy, which is paid for by the cost of falling productivity and crumbling competitiveness. The opportunity to chart our relentless decline through the medium of newly independent yet sketchy statistics is not much compensation.
	Disentangling statistics from the Chancellor's coat tails is only the first step in ensuring that, in his words,
	"fiscal decisions are fully transparent and accountable."—[ Official Report, 10 July 2003; Vol. 408, c. 1404.]
	Independent statistics make fiscal decisions transparent, but they do not matter a jot to a Government who are not willing to see themselves as accountable.
	Several years ago, the Chancellor called the private finance initiative
	"a cynical distortion of public finance".
	However, in the past 18 months or so, his own cynical PFI distortions have been unravelled by the ONS: £1.25 billion was added in August 2005; £5 billion was added in February 2006; and £4.95 billion was added in September 2006. Will the newly independent successor to the ONS continue to add piecemeal to the Government's balance sheet—a billion here, a billion there—or will there be a clean sweep for statistics and the Child Support Agency following this year's Gracious Speech?
	The Chancellor's £5 billion annual raid on pensions has cost pensioners £100 billion. How will the independent board force the Government to confront the looming crisis of their own creation? The Government's spending on consultants reached £2.4 billion by 2005, over£2 billion more than when Labour came into government. How will the new board force the Chancellor to admit that results must follow investment?
	How will the independent studies reduce the burdens placed on the most vulnerable in our society? The public sector is expanding and unelected quangos are blossoming while families and businesses alike are simply withering under the tax burden. What teeth will the new board have to deal with those problems? That is what we know without the benefit of truly independent statistics.

Philip Hammond: We come to the end of the final day of debate on what will be the Prime Minister's final legislative programme. I am glad to see the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in his place; I am sorry that he could not join us for more of the debate. There is a certain poignancy in his winding up this debate, because he is probably the most ultra-Blairite member of the Cabinet. Depending on which way one looks at it, he is either the most honest in expressing his view or the least nimble at repositioning himself for life under the clunking fist regime coming soon.
	The good news for the Secretary of State is that I have calculated that if he can hang on to his job for another 22 days, until the House rises, he will have surpassed the career average of his four immediate predecessors. The bad news is that no one is betting on his luck lasting much beyond that. Things have come to something when Conservative Members are wary of quoting a Cabinet Minister's description of the Chancellor for fear of being rebuked for the use of unparliamentary language.
	We have had what can be described as a wide-ranging and extensive debate this evening, the highlight of which was the first outing of the big clunking fist since its baptism by the Prime Minister the week before last. It clattered in like a medieval war engine, and my impression was more of clunking than of fist. It looked like a bit of a primitive weapon against the rapier that my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) plunged into the Chancellor's record.
	The Prime Minister has been promising welfare reform since 1997. The Bill that has carried over into this Session is the first sign of any serious attempt to deliver on that promise, so I will not be complaining, as some of my colleagues have had cause to do from this Bench over the last few days, of a sense of déjà vu surrounding the measure—quite the opposite.
	I cannot say the same about the child support Bill. We do not yet know the detail of the Government's proposals, but we do know that they amount to an admission of failure of the 2003 reforms, in which the Government have squandered £500,000 of taxpayers' money on a failed computer system. There are now1.4 million families trapped in the misery of the Child Support Agency, and every Member of the House knows exactly what that means from their constituency experiences. If the Secretary of State is looking for cross-party support on CSA reform, his proposals will have to address the plight of those already in the system as well as new claimants, because we will not support any solution that denies a just and fair outcome to those 1.4 million families.
	We have supported and will continue to support the Government's objectives in the Welfare Reform Bill. I hope that the Secretary of State, when he winds up the debate, will acknowledge the constructive contribution from my hon. Friends in the Committee proceedings on that Bill, which are ongoing. Similarly, we welcome the key changes to the state pension system which we expect to be introduced in the pensions Bill when it is published—tomorrow, I believe. We welcome the re-establishment of the earnings link, a policy on which we fought the last election, and the changes to the contribution rules and caring credits, which will address the unfairness suffered by women pensioners in the present system. All of that will be paid for by asking people to work until they are 68.
	Both those measures—and, indeed, the reform of the child support system—have the potential to contribute significantly to the anti-poverty agenda, but both require the creation of significant numbers of net new jobs, because both aim to achieve their objectives through a focus on work. That is the right focus for the British economy and for a sustainable and permanent reduction in poverty. An effective attack on poverty requires an attack on the causes of poverty and, for those who can work, work is the sustainable route out of poverty.
	However, as my hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor pointed out this afternoon, the backdrop to such work-focused policy initiatives does not look terribly encouraging. Unemployment is at a seven-year record and rising. Long-term youth unemployment, which according to the Prime Minister as recently as September has been eradicated on the planet he inhabits, stands at 175,000 in the world where the rest of us live. Productivity growth has halved, and Britain is sliding down the international competitiveness league tables. All that makes the targets on reduction in claimant numbers, on increase in work force participation and on delayed retirement much more difficult for the Secretary of State to achieve. I am sure that that thought gives the Chancellor many sleepless nights.
	We will not support the abandonment of the2.7 million people currently on incapacity benefit. The shocking truth is that the Secretary of State plans to reduce the number of claimants almost entirely by stemming the flow of new claimants. Almost none of the intended reduction will be achieved by people coming off long-term benefits and going back into work.
	The Secretary of State says he has not got the money for a more extensive roll-out of the pathways to work programme. We appreciate the need for fiscal discipline, but there is a way to roll out pathways for the benefit of existing claimants without risk or cost to the Treasury by inviting the private and voluntary sector providers, who are negotiating for contracts under the Secretary of State's programme, to take on existing claimants at their own risk. No result, no payment. The providers say they could do it; 1 million existing claimants say that they want it. It is a win-win option for claimants, for taxpayers and for the economy, so why is the Secretary of State not pursuing it, rather than turning his back on existing claimants?
	The Government's central poverty focus has been children, and rightly so. Tackling child poverty is the key to breaking the cycle of poverty, which from generation to generation becomes entrenched, not just as material poverty but as a poverty of hope and aspiration. However, figures published by our social justice policy group last week showed just how shallow the Government's achievements are. Their targets are focused on households that have less than 60 per cent. of median earnings, so the Government's efforts have been equally focused on moving those just below that line to just above it.

Philip Hammond: The number of people living in deep poverty, below 40 per cent. of median earnings, has shot up by 400,000 between 1996-97 and 2004-05, the latest year for which figures are available. If the Economic Secretary thinks that those figures are not right, I would be happy to hear from him. The percentage of children in persistent poverty is unchanged over the same period. That reminds us, if a reminder were needed, that good intentions do not translate automatically into good outcomes.
	Poverty exists, of course, right across the age spectrum. New Labour boasts of the success of pension credit, and clearly it has lifted several hundred thousand poor pensioners out of relative poverty—[Hon. Members: "Ah!"] We accept that. That is why we support the new architecture for the state pension system, which includes pension credit. However, the weakness of mass means-testing as a strategy is also underlined. Some 1.5 million pensioners, half of them living in poverty, fail to claim because the forms are too complex, because the process is too intrusive and because they are too proud.
	The pensions Bill and the White Paper mentioned in the Gracious Speech will not solve that problem and will not address the immediate crisis facing Britain's occupational pension funds. Duck and weave as the Chancellor might, he cannot escape responsibility for the crisis, as it was he who imposed a £5 billion a year stealth tax on pension funds, accelerating the collapse of final salary schemes in the private sector and causing a loss of confidence, which has almost halved Britain's savings ratio since he came to office.
	Some 60,000 pension schemes with 1 million members have begun winding up on the Chancellor's watch, and the crisis has cost 125,000 people all or part of their pension as their schemes have failed—we heard an impassioned plea on their behalf from the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright). It has also reinforced the pensions apartheid that increasingly exists between the private and public sectors. Public sector unfunded pension liabilities are now estimated at up to £1 trillion. That is the real crisis, about which the Gracious Speech has nothing to say to those who have saved all their lives, who did exactly as Governments told them to do and who have been left with little or nothing.
	With breathtaking arrogance, the Chancellor and the Secretary of State have decided in their wisdom that the ombudsman and the Public Administration Committee are wrong, and that the Government will sit in judgment on themselves. This is not about a couple of leaflets, as they would have us believe, but about a systematic weakening of the security of fund members through reductions in funding levels and the ignoring of actuarial advice, all of which was going on while Government information was reassuring members that their money was safe.
	I am not asking the Secretary of State to write a blank cheque with taxpayers' money. I am asking him to display a little humility and accept the finding of maladministration by the ombudsman, to engage in the discussion with all the stakeholders, to examine unclaimed assets and residual assets in the failed schemes, and to come up with sensible figures for the net cost of support at different levels. In short, I am asking him to show some leadership in resolving the situation. This issue is a terrible blot on this Government's record, and risks undermining all the Secretary of State's attempts to rebuild confidence in the pensions system for the future.
	The modern Conservative party shares many of the Government's aspirations on poverty, pensions and welfare reform. As so often with this Government, it is not the aspiration but the delivery that lets them down. They say that it is the thought that counts, but that is cold comfort to people trapped on incapacity benefit, to people living on a pension which is a fraction of what they were expecting and what they saved for, or to people facing marginal tax and benefit withdrawal rates of 80 to 90 per cent. as they go into part-time work.
	We doubt not Labour's emotional commitment to tackling these problems, but its ability to deliver. We understand that sustainable social justice can be built only on strong economic foundations. With declining productivity, spending out of control, public debt up8 per cent. in a single year and our once world-class pension system in tatters, it is clear that the clunking fist is losing its grip. For the Prime Minister, such a litany of failure is a serious dent to his legacy, but for his successor, whose only claim to fame is a claim to competent economic management, it is a disaster.
	As my hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor said today, when people look back on the Chancellor's10 years in office, they will remember him as the Chancellor who failed to prepare Britain to compete in the new global economy; the Chancellor who, by his own fundamental yardstick, has fundamentally failed in his ambitions for the British economy; and the Chancellor who spent a decade dreaming of his future, only to find that he had become the past before he got there. When the people of this country finally lay this Government to rest, the epitaph on the headstone will surely read, "New Labour. 1997-2009. RIP. So much promised, so little delivered".

John Hutton: No.
	The Queen's Speech carries forward, too, the central purpose of Labour in government, keeping our promises to the people to build a strong Britain, where economic strength and social justice together ensure opportunity for all.
	We have heard a lot of references in this debateto welfare reform. The previous Conservative Government's welfare reform policies were a total failure. The number of children living in poverty doubled. The number of people claiming lone parent or incapacity benefit trebled. Twice in a decade, the number of people unemployed exceeded 3 million.

John Hutton: No.
	Things are different now. The new deal has helped more than 1.7 million people into work. Today there are more people in work than ever before. Employment is up by more than 2.5 million since 1997, and up in every region and country of the United Kingdom, with the biggest increases in the neighbourhoods and cities that started in the worst position. The biggest falls in unemployment have been among those who wereon benefits for the longest. Long-term claimant unemployment is down by more than 70 per cent. and long-term youth claimant unemployment has been virtually eradicated.
	We introduced measures in the previous Session, carried over to this one, on welfare reform. Our Welfare Reform Bill will build on the progress that we have made. It will replace incapacity benefit with a new employment support allowance, and offer new support in return for new obligations for people to help themselves. It enshrines the proper balance between rights and responsibilities, and reflects the values of opportunity and security. I hope that it will continue to enjoy cross-party support.
	Several hon. Members have referred to our proposed legislation on child support. Tackling child poverty will be the first priority of the reforms. The Bill will mark a clean break with the past, with new arrangements that work with parents to deliver the best outcomes for their children. The Bill begins the process of realigning policy with reality. Building on the recommendations made by Sir David Henshaw, it will help parents to take responsibility for making their own child maintenance arrangements, backed up with strong and effective support when that does not happen. The Bill will provide for the creation of a new organisation to replace the existing Child Support Agency. It will radically strengthen the available enforcement powers to recover maintenance from those who repeatedly fail to pay, including through the introduction of new powers in relation to curfews and the suspension of passports when necessary.
	The pensions Bill, to which many hon. Members have referred, will meet the challenges of under-saving and demographic change highlighted by last year's Turner report.

John Hutton: The hon. Gentleman needs to keep himself up to date. My right hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn) is not my flatmate— [Hon. Members: "Oh!"] I do not therefore want to spend any more time dealing with that trivial point. Both my right hon. Friend and every Labour Member would recognise the contribution that tax credits have made to taking hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty.
	The pensions Bill will promote personal responsibility for dignity and security in old age; a simpler and more generous state pension, but one that continues to target resources on those most in need; a modern contributory principle that delivers fairer outcomes, especially for women and carers; a new delivery authority for a new system of personal accounts that will make it easier for more people to save; and yes, a higher state pension age that keeps the proportion of adult life spent receiving the state pension stable for each generation and helps to secure the long-term financial stability and sustainability of our pensions system. The Government will also place the restoration of the link to earnings at the heart of the new legislation.
	Rather surprisingly, the Opposition amendment regrets the absence of measures in the Gracious Speech to deal with pensions. I very much regret that the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge has put his name to such a motion. After all, he is the same hon. Member who stood at the Dispatch Box on the day we published the White Paper and said:
	"The White Paper has been long awaited and will be widely welcomed."—[ Official Report, 25 May 2006; Vol. 446, c. 1653.]
	He is the same hon. Member who described in the House, only a month later,
	"the key elements of the White Paper, all of which we can enthusiastically support"— [ Official Report, 27 June 2006;Vol. 448, c. 149.]
	That cannot be the same hon. Member who put his name to this motion.
	Through the measures in the Queen's Speech, the Government are taking the long-term decisions necessary to provide security and opportunity in a rapidly changing world. I propose that the House support the Government in the Lobby tonight.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Withthe leave of the House, I will put motions 5, 6 and7 together.

Gordon Prentice: I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the important matter of the future of the Karims, who are constituents of mine in Pendle, and the persecution of Christians in Pakistan.
	Tomorrow, the Pope travels to Turkey, and we all wish him well. We all want an open dialogue between Christianity and Islam. I want people of all faiths and none to rub along together, respecting each other's beliefs and being tolerant of differences. I agreed with Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor when he said six months ago in a lecture to the Oxford centre for Islamic studies that Catholic-Muslim dialogue depends on religious freedom—we all agree with that. However, there are many question marks about religious freedom in Pakistan. Indeed, my constituents, the Karims, fled from Pakistan.
	The Karims are asylum seekers, and asylum seekers get a really bad press. Asylum seekers are viewed with suspicion, even more so when they are failed asylum seekers, like the Karims. That is why I want to tell the story of Nigel and Pearl Karim and their two children, Calvin and Crystal. They are threatened with deportation, but I want them to be allowed to stay in the United Kingdom outside the immigration rules, for reasons that I will explain, on compassionate grounds.
	The Karims are an ordinary family with an extraordinary story. They came to the United Kingdom in 2002 and sought asylum. They were turned down in November of that year. They are practising Catholics and fear persecution if they return to Pakistan. They appealed, and all the appeals were exhausted in 2003. Since then, I have been working with them. I had a long discussion with Pearl and Nigel Karim on Friday in my constituency office. Their story is long and complex, but at its heart is the relationship between the majority Muslim community in Pakistan and the Christian and other minority faiths. That provides the context.
	Nigel Karim is now 53. He was born into a mixed-faith family. His father was Muslim and died when Nigel was three. Nigel was brought up in Karachi as a Catholic by his Christian mother, who still lives in Pakistan. Nigel went to church but, by his own admission, he was not a particularly regular churchgoer. All that changed when, in 1987, he joined the YMCA and met Ivan Edwin, who was a committed Christian with a very high profile. Nigel started to worship regularly after that and would help Edwin out, driving him to meetings, posting letters and helping around the office.
	It was through that relationship that Nigel met Edwin's cousin and his own future wife, Pearl, who was also a Christian. They married in 1991, and their son Calvin was born in 1994. The relatives on the father's side, the Muslim side, were very unhappy about that, particularly the cousins, Mohammed Sharif and Mohammed Azim. They periodically made threatsto the Karims which grew in intensity once Calvin was old enough to go to school. Indeed, in 2001 they threatened to kidnap the boy. They let it be known that they did not want the children to be brought up as Christians.
	It was at that point that the Karims resolved to get out of Pakistan. It was just as well that they did, because Pearl's cousin, Ivan Edwin, was murdered in May 2002. He was killed in his office. He was found strapped to his chair with a syringe sticking out of his arm that was filled with the tranquiliser Diazepam. His killers were never found. When the Karims were living in Karachi, they moved around, living in four or five different rented properties, fearing to stay in any house for too long. Nigel Karim's mother similarly moved around, fearing that she, too, would be tracked down. I believe that the Karims will be danger if they go back. That is the difference between me and Ministers.
	There are 4 million Christians in Pakistan, but the Government have no central record of the number of people from that country who come here seeking asylum because of religious persecution. There is a huge number of Christians over there. Indeed, in Karachi alone, I am told, there are 120,000 Catholics. Clearly, we cannot have 4 million Pakistani Christians applying for visitor's visas to the United Kingdom and, as soon as they step off the plane at Heathrow, applying for asylum on the grounds of their religious beliefs. I accept that each case must be dealt with case by case, but I believe that the Karims' case is compelling and that new information that they provided relating to their plight was not properly considered by my hon. Friend and her colleagues.
	I have been involved with the Karims since June 2003 and have made a series of representations to Home Office Ministers; I forget how many. The Karims have been told that they have no basis to stay in the UK and they should leave. Most recently, the Karims received two letters on 16 October and 7 November and were told that the latest submissions
	"do not amount to a fresh claim"
	and that they have
	"no further right of appeal".
	They could be deported at any stage.
	These letters are now the subject of an application for judicial review by the Karims' solicitors, who say that Ministers failed properly to consider new evidence, one piece of which concerned threats made to Nigel Karim's Christian mother, to whom I referred. The other related to a poster that has gone up in the area of Karachi where they lived. It shows a photograph of Nigel Karim next to a rather ominous drawing of a gallows and a reward of 500,000 rupees for information on Nigel Karim's whereabouts. He is referred to in this poster as "Nigel the Arrogant."
	Who would feel relaxed about going back to Pakistan in these circumstances? But the Government believe—I am putting words in my hon. Friend's mouth, which I should not do—that Pakistan is like a giant forgery factory; that all sorts of documents are forged and fiddled and we cannot believe anything that anyone brings forward because it could be a forgery. It was up to the authorities to prove that the documentation was a forgery, and they have not done that. That is the basis for the application for judicial review.
	In May this year, the immigration authorities and the police removed Mr. and Mrs. Karim and their children to Yarl's Wood detention centre, pending their removal from the country. It provoked a huge outcry in my constituency, and my office contacted Yarl's Wood. We were all relieved that the case was to be given further consideration, but we are now back to where we started.
	Many people in this country will find it strange that people in some countries overseas are terrified of being a member of a minority faith. Certainly in Pakistan there are probably hundreds of thousands of people terrified to worship their own god in their own way. I asked the Library for information on this and there is a huge amount from Amnesty International and others.
	I was drawn to the International Religious Freedom report that has just been published for 2006. It charts a series of abuses and states that in Pakistan
	"Police torture and mistreatment of those in custody remained a serious and common problem throughout the country and at times resulted in extrajudicial killings."
	Christian communities claim their members are more likely to be abused. For example:
	"The policeman charged in the May 2004 death-in-custody of Samuel Masih, a Christian, remained in detention pending trial."
	The policemen were charged under the blasphemy laws; Masih died after police torture. The operation of the blasphemy laws continues to be a cause of great concern. We are told that they are routinely used to harass religious minorities and liberal Muslims and to settle personal scores or business rivalries. The punishment for blasphemy is death, which is chilling. For example: in April this year, an appellate court acquitted Christian school teacher Pervez Masih of blasphemy charges and released him after five years in detention.
	In April this year, two prison staff at the central prison in Sahiwal, Punjab joined Muslim inmates in attacking four Christian prisoners who had gathered for prayer and bible study. The prison staff stripped the Christians of their clothing and physically tortured them. The four were locked up in solitary confinement, and no action was taken against the prison officials.
	On the evening and night of 12 November last year, a mob of 2,500 people, urged on by local clergy, attacked and destroyed Christian churches, religious properties and houses in the town of Sangla Hill. According to witnesses, the police took no action to control or disperse the mob or to protect Christian property. And so it goes on.

Gordon Prentice: Of course I agree with that. The example is, perhaps, extreme, but it is symptomatic of what can happen in a country when religious intolerance is given free rein.
	Last month, I asked the Foreign Office what representations the Government were making to Pakistan concerning the position of Christians. The Minister of State told me that he had raised the issue with the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Shaukat Aziz, in March, asking him to take action to protect religious minorities. Only last month, I had the opportunity to have a word here at Westminster with the Pakistan Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Senator Tariq Aziz Khan, when I specifically mentioned the case of the Karims.
	The Karims are well-educated people, and they put a thousand times more into the community than they take out. One of the many letters to me describes the two children as polite, extremely well behaved and always eager to learn. Both children are in the top streams for all subjects at their school.
	The Karims have told their story to the local press in Pendle; they have told it to the BBC "Today" programme; and their story can be accessed on the web. I have received literally hundreds of e-mails from the classmates of Crystal and Calvin. A petition signed by between 3,000 and 4,000 people was presented to meat a packed meeting at Christ church, Nelson, on9 November. I have been contacted by a delegation from the local clergy, which is led by Father Chris Gorman, and by one from Catholic schools, which is led by Brendan Conboy, headteacher of Fisher More Catholic high school. The school chaplain has also been in touch with me.
	I have a file on the Karims that is inches thick. I have a motion from my local authority, Pendle borough council, supporting the Karims, and it notes the widespread support across the area.
	I have received letters of support from respected local journalists such as Sue Ritchie from the  Nelson Leader, who tells me that the family have worked so hard to integrate into the local community that they are a real asset and that they should stay.
	I have received letters from Ann Kerrigan, a local Liberal Democrat councillor who is fighting the family's corner, from community campaigners Sue and David Penney, from Sheila Samuels and from others too numerous to mention.
	I have received a letter from the Rev. Richard Adams, who says:
	"Christians of any church face threats to safety and life in Pakistan. False charges of blasphemy against Islam are common and the police offer no protection."

Joan Ryan: I assure my hon. Friend that the information that I give him is correct. It is the case that the Karim family were recorded as absconders earlier this month. I am happy to discuss that with him following the debate.
	While the application is still outstanding, no action will be taken to remove the family from the United Kingdom. I ask my hon. Friend to advise the family that it would be in their best interests to comply with the conditions attached to their temporary release and to report any change of address immediately. I know that he appreciates that while the application remains outstanding, it would be inappropriate to discuss the case in any but the broader terms in which I have done today, and that it would not be appropriate to intervene while the case is before the court. Should the court decide that the removal of the family is lawful and proportionate, I hope that he will accept that returning them to Pakistan is the correct, fair and just course of action.
	Although I have only discussed the family's case in broader terms, I hope that that has been of use to my hon. Friend. I understand that he wrote on 10 November to my hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality about the family's case, and that a detailed written response will be sent to him shortly.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at fourteen minutes pastEleven o'clock.